1. The document discusses Everett Rogers' theory of the diffusion of innovations and the categorization of different types of adopters. 2. Rogers identified five adopter categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. 3. Each category is defined by their characteristics, such as their willingness to adopt innovations, degree of opinion leadership, and social connections. Innovators are the first to adopt new ideas while laggards are the last.

1. AJIT T G
Department of Agricultural
Extension

2. “The degree to which an individual or other
unit of adoption is relatively earlier in
adopting new ideas than other members of a
system, than about any other concept in
diffusion research”(Rogers,1983)
 Expressed short-term goal - facilitate the
adoption of innovations
 Because increased innovativeness is the
main objective of the change agents

4. 1. Determining the number of adopter
categories to conceptualize
2. Deciding on the portion of the members of
a system to include in each category
3. Determining the method, statistical or
otherwise, of defining the adopter
categories.
INNOVATIVENESS-relative

5. 1. Exhaustive, or include all the units of study
2. Mutually exclusive, or exclude from any
other category a unit of study that appears
in one category
3. Derived from one classificatory principle

7. Innovators: Venturesome
Early Adopters: Respectable
Early Majority: Deliberate
Late Majority: Skeptical
Laggards: Traditional

8.  Very eager to try new ideas
 More cosmopolite social relationships
 Gate-keeping role in the flow of new ideas
into a social system
 Prerequisites for innovators;
=>Control of substantial financial
resources to absorb the possible loss owing to
an unprofitable innovation
=>ability to understand and apply
complex technical knowledge

9.  More integrated part of the local social
system than are innovators
 Localites
 Greatest degree of opinion leadership
 Potential adopters look to early adopters for
advice
 “The individual to check with“
 Change agents-role model
 Central position in the communication
structure
 Make judicious innovation decisions

10.  Adopt new ideas just before the average
member of a social system
 Interact frequently with their peers
 Seldom hold leadership positions
 Interconnectedness in the system's networks
 Innovation-decision period is relatively
longer
 "Be not the first by which the new is
tried,/nor the last to lay the old aside“-
Alexander pope

11.  Adopt new ideas just after the average
member of a social system
 An economic necessity and the answer to
increasing network pressures
 Do not adopt until most others in their social
system have done so
 Pressure of peers is necessary to motivate
adoption
 Late majority feel that it is safe to adopt

12.  Last in a social system
 No opinion leadership
 Individuals interact with others who also
have relatively traditional values
 Laggards finally adopt an innovation, it may
already have been superseded by another