SESSION 4

Session four podcast addresses the concept of "Diffusion of Innovation."

In his book, Mr. Rogers discusses how the adaptation of a new idea flows thru a group of individuals. The rate at which new ideas are accepted by society is determined by their willingness to adapt to a new idea. Individuals are always somewhere within the five levels Mr. Rogers described: Innovators, Early Adapters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Lagers. In our society, everyone is at a different level of comfort when it comes to technology. Naturally and by extension, organizations of every conceivable type are also afflicted by this relative willingness of society to adapt to new technological ideas.

After some soul searching, I determined that I fall in the category of the Early Majority group of individuals. I was able to make such determination by analyzing how I determine when it is time to acquire new technology. I found that since I have experience in electronic design, I also know that when a new product is released in the market it is overpriced: from the business standpoint, this is when the big money is made; there is no competition and the demand for new products is usually high. New product introduction is also the time when all the Research and Development that went into creating the new product must be recovered. Just as important, newly released products have the inherent tendency to have bugs, glitches and/or design flaws. These facts are enough for me to prevent me from purchasing new technology as soon as it appears. In my view, it is better to wait until a product has proven itself to be reliable, problem-free and available at a reasonable price.

I will use cell phone technology as an example: when cell phones first appeared in the market, these were a true novelty, a technological breakthrough, a product which looked quite promising. I also found out how expensive these devices were and how the customer was not only being charged for outgoing calls, but for incoming ones as well; the product had coverage in very limited areas at the time and calls were very frequently dropped. I decided to wait a few years to allow these problems to go away; I knew the technology would become more reliable, the prices would drop and the features would also be more plentiful. I finally decided to purchase a cell phone for myself and my wife and daughter. As I anticipated, there were indeed more features built into these phones: movie recorder, photo camera, sound recorder, internet access, calendar, calculator, notepad, etc. I was very pleased with the prices as well as the service fees. I am still not happy with area reception: my calls are still sometimes dropped.

I must admit that the reason I decided to purchase these phones for myself and my family, was because of necessity; we needed to maintain frequent communication due to ever-changing time schedules among us. Cell phone purchase then became a reasonable thing to do to solve our time scheduling problems. I do not believe I hesitate to change; I welcome technological change, because of the nature of the work I do as an electronics technician. In my field, things are never the same; new products appear all the time. Products that survive on the market, simply come back with more features, more powerful and smaller than before; sometimes the fast pace of technology can be unsettling.