Technology Adoption LifeCycle
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The Technology Adoption LifeCycle is a sociological model, originally developed in 1957 at Iowa State College. (May 1957) "The Diffusion Process". Special Report No. 18 1: 56-77. Its purpose was to track the purchase patterns of hybrid seed corn by farmers. Approximately six years later Everett Rogers broadened the use of this model in his book, Diffusion of Innovations.
The Technology Adoption Lifecycle model describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation, according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups. The process of adoption over time is typically illustrated as a classical normal distribution or "bell curve." The model indicates that the first group of people to use a new product is called "innovators," followed by "early adopters." Next come the early and late majority, and the last group to eventually adopt a product are called "laggards."
The demographic and psychological (or "psychographic") profiles of each adoption group were originally specified by the North Central Rural Sociology Committee, Subcommittee for the Study of the Diffusion of Farm Practices. The Diffusion Process. Ames: Agriculture Extension Service, Iowa State College, Special Report No. 18, 1957
In 1990 a variation of the original Technology Adoption Life Cycle was developed by Lee James while working with Regis McKenna. It suggested that for discontinuous or disruptive innovations, there is a gap or chasm between the first two adopter groups (innovators/early adopters), and the early majority. This variant of the original Technology Adoption Life Cycle was later described by Geoffrey Moore in a book called Crossing The Chasm.
