Repositories as an Innovation
Thinking About Repositories as an Innovation
The decision has been made. Your state or your institution has decided to establish and make available a digital repository for use by your faculty. Now what? While there is significant planning and work involved to setup and configure a repository, the most challenging task is to get faculty/people to use it! If you build it, they will not come UNLESS you consider and plan for attitudinal and behavioral changes to use the repository. One useful approach to plan for these changes is called Diffusion Theory.
Everett M. Rogers’ wrote a foundational book on this subject, The Diffusion of Innovations (ISBN-10: 0029266718). Rogers defines an innovation as an idea, behavior, or object that is perceived as new by its audience. Rogers regales readers with tales of great innovations that were never adopted and helps us understand why they were not adopted. There are some basic principles to consider and plan strategies for. It’s clear that you want your repository, to be a success story. With a “diffusion plan” in place, you may even speed up adoption and the “tipping point” for mainstream adoption.
The first concept Rogers discusses is the realization that innovations are adopted by individuals based on their ability to enhance or improve an individual’s life in some way. When given the opportunity to change the way they do things, people ask themselves questions like, what’s in it for me? What are the risks? What, if any, are the benefits? Is it easy or difficult to use? Potential users of your repository will make an informal cost-benefit analysis where they may perceive the newness of the idea and related uncertainties surrounding the repository as a major obstacle. They may not be sure there are any benefits to using the repository or how much it might disrupt their familiar routines. They may wonder if the repository is stable and reliable, or too much on the cutting edge of things. However, if they believe that the innovation may give them some relative advantage over the way they are currently doing things, if it’s compatible with their values and general habits, and if it’s easy to use, they will likely adopt it.
Rogers classifies individuals into five categories based on their likelihood to adopt an innovation:
- Innovators – early visionary adopters
- Early adopters – imaginative individuals who are willing to adopt new ideas with personal benefits
- Early majority – accept simple, proven better ways of doing what they already do
- Late majority – will follow mainstream and accepted ideas
- Laggards – often identify real challenges to adoption and the last to adopt an innovation, if ever
Specific strategies must be developed to attract, interest, and engage each of these groups to learn about an innovation. See page 1 of http://www.enablingchange.com.au/Summary_Diffusion_Theory.pdf [PDF] for more details.
The Mechanism of Diffusion
An individual makes a personal decision as to whether to adopt an innovation or remain with the status quo. Assuming that decisions are personal, rather than authoritative or collective, each member of the social system follows this five step process in their own innovation-decision:
- Knowledge. The individual becomes aware of an innovation and has an idea of how the innovation works
- Persuasion. A favorable or unfavorable opinion about the innovation is formed.
- Decision. Actions are taken that lead an individual to choose whether to adopt or reject the innovation
- Implementation. A person makes use of the innovation
- Confirmation. In this final phase, each person evaluates the results of their innovation-decision.
For more details on this process, please see: http://www.stanford.edu/class/symbsys205/Diffusion%20of%20Innovations.htm
Innovators are usually the first to test the innovation. Their opinions become essential to provide important data for the stage 2 early adopters, from which opinion leaders emerge. (Opinion leaders are individuals who are able to influence other’s opinions about innovations.) If opinion leaders embrace the innovation, the largest group, majority adopters, will more than likely adopt it as well, leading to the “tipping point” of adoption. The last group, laggards, often consists of the assertive skeptics and is difficult to win over.
We recommend that you use diffusion theory as a tool for analyzing your end users, and to keep the process and groups in mind when formulating marketing plans, materials, and communications.
Resources
- Diffusion of Innovations, Fourth Edition by Everett M. Rogers (1995) ISBN-13: 978-0029266717
- A Review of Diffusion of Innovations by Greg Orr, Stanford University, March 3, 2003 http://www.stanford.edu/class/symbsys205/Diffusion%20of%20Innovations.htm
- Diffusion Simulation Game: http://www.indiana.edu/~istdemo/guest.html
- Susan Lucas, Professor. AEL 697: Seminar In Instructional Leadership. Rethinking, Restructuring and Reforming Faculty Technology Development. http://susanlucas.com/it/ael697/facdev.html
