Innovators and Early Adopters in the Diffusion of Innovations: A Literature Review

Ozgur Dedehayir, Roland J. Ortt, Carla Riverola and Francesc Miralles

Chapter 4 in Digital Disruptive Innovation, 2019, pp 85-115 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: Despite accounting for a very small percentage of the population that adopts an innovation, the ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’ — representing the two earliest groups of individuals to acquire the new product or service — play a crucial role in the dissemination of the innovation to larger market segments. The objective of this paper is to understand the characteristics of these individuals that positively influence their decisions to adopt innovations. We argue that awareness of these traits will enable firms to attain speedier uptake of their offerings while aiding policymakers achieve quicker and wider proliferation of new technologies intended for societal benefit. We undertake a review of the literature studying the diffusion of innovations and show future directions that this framework should take to analyse the adoption lifecycle.

Keywords: Innovation; Digital Innovation; Disruptive Technologies; Digital Disruption Strategies; Digital Business Model Innovation; Digital Platform Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9781786347602_0004 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9781786347602_0004 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781786347602_0004

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().