In 1927, a lone farmer in Iowa began planting a new type of hybrid seed corn of which none of his fellow Iowa farmers had ever heard. One year later, three more farmers had planted the seed. One year after that, there were 8. The next year there were 12, then 18. The following year, five years after the first farmer began planting this new, high-performance seed corn, one more farmer joined the fray. By 1933, 25 farmers were planting the seed.
Then, in 1934, 16 farmers followed suit. Then 21, 36, 61 so that by 1937, ten years after the new seed was first planted in Iowa soil, 159 of the 260 or so farmers in Iowa had adopted this new idea.
Never mind that the new hybrid was superior to anything that had ever been planted before. Even so, it took a while for it to catch on and eventually become widespread, until 14 years after the new idea was introduced to a fairly tight knit and competitive farming community, the seed finally found its way into every row of corn coming out of Iowa.
This study of the diffusion of hybrid seed corn among Iowa farmers, along with more than 500 other innovations, served as the basis for a model developed by a sociologist named Everett Rogers. To develop the model, Rogers synthesized research from 508 ideas that had been introduced to a social group and eventually adopted by the entire group. What emerged was The Diffusion of Innovations model.
In this model, rogers identifies 5 factors that play key roles in whether or not an idea will become rejected or adopted by the entire group. And whether or not it will get beyond the tipping point. Paraphrased, these five factors are:
Improvability - How does the idea improve someone’s life?
Compatibility - How well does it fit into an individual’s life?
Simplicity- Is it simple and easy to understand?
Trialability - How easy is it to acquire?
Visibility - Is the new idea visible to others?
If you have a new idea you want to introduce it to the world, make sure it subscribes to the five factors above.
Then, take heart. ‘Cause it’s not gonna catch on overnight.
Because if something as simple as a superior breed of seed corn took 14 years for a small community of farmers to adopt, why would anything more complex be any different?
Patience and plan to endure the naturally slow uptake of a new idea is one of the keys to making an idea work.
‘Cause no matter how good the idea is, time is rarely on its side.
