If you want to know how to succeed in the complicated process of diffusion
of innovations, you can go beyond Everett Rogers’s justly famed
book of that name, and look at the man and the way he lived. When Ev
left us in October 2004, his legacy was not just a lifetime of extraordinary
work,many fine publications, and a wealth of friendships around the
world. It also was the lesson of his own unique way of going about his
work. In diffusion theory, health communication, entertainment-education,
and the other areas he worked in so vigorously over a half-century,
there were some common themes — each of them identified not only
in his writings, but also in how the man conducted himself personally
and professionally.
In his many books and articles, and in his teaching and consultation
work, Ev Rogers argued that successful diffusion of innovations requires
bringing together both knowledge and direct experience related to the
innovation, using informal per- sonal networking to supplement the more
formal processes, and using whatever influence one has to champion new
ideas.In everyday life, his conversations with colleagues, students,
funders, or decisionmakers often began with information from the science
he knew so well, but quickly moved to vivid stories of who Ev had just
talked with, or where he’d just visited.The listener soon felt
he or she was part of the experience too, and that made learning or
action easier. Ev ’s blend of scientific knowledge and direct experience
was potent, in part because of his unvarnished enthusiasm for what he
’d experienced himself!
His recipe for diffusion also carried into the personal networking
realm, where I saw Ev constantly, but seemingly without effort, help
connect people he thought should know each other, or who could work
with him on a project.Just to give one example from my own life, he
started telling me 10 years ago about his good friend and colleague,
Professor Doe Mayer of the University of Southern California Cinema
and Television School, who he thought I should get to know. When I didn’t
immediately follow through, he gently suggested again that we really
should be in touch, and of course once I did make the contact I found
a powerful mind to help shape how I think about health communication,
and a good friend to boot!
And Ev was the constant champion of many, often wildly diverse, ideas
he thought were worth more public attention. Some years ago, when the
City of Santa Monica established one of the first public Internet systems,
the Public Electronic Network (PEN), it included computers in places
like public libraries, so that homeless people could be part of the
system. Ev not only wanted to write about PEN, so that this creative
idea could be spread more widely, but he also asked a homeless man he’d
met through that system to coauthor an article with him! His coauthor’s
perspectives helped frame the article’s themes more creatively,
of course, and his presence also helped generate more attention to the
article itself.
This recipe for promoting the spread of new ideas added up to an approach
that often to me sounded a bit like the ‘‘action research’’
method promoted by the great social psychologist Kurt Lewin. Lewin thought
of action research as a three-step spiral process of planning for action
(including reconnaissance of the environment so the planning will have
some sense of reality to it), taking action, and fact-finding about
the results of the action. While Ev Rogers might have used different
words, the basic notion was the same. Ideas don’t implement themselves
— their use requires systematic effort, and often use of the tools
of science to help with implementation.
In the most general sense, Ev both believed and demonstrated in his
work and life the importance of the human element when turning ideas
into action.That is perhaps more commonplace today (though certainly
not universal, in a world where too many decisionmakers still think
change can happen solely on the basis of a directive memo!); when Ev
Rogers was starting his journey in these realms, it was relatively uncommon.
But then the man always was looking one or two steps ahead in all his
work. I even saw that for Ev Rogers in our trips together to the Santa
Fe Opera, made over a number of years with his wife and colleague Corinne.We
’d be sitting there enjoying the performance, but Ev also was looking
beyond the back of the opera house to the lights of Los Alamos in the
distance, no doubt plotting next steps in some of the very interesting
work he did with scientists there in recent years.
That’s just one of many, quite diverse memories I’ll treasure
of this extraordinary colleague and friend. In the pieces that follow,
however, my coauthors and I will concentrate on some particular aspects
of Everett Rogers — how he impacted us as scientists and most specifically
as writers.The article and three commentaries in this section all are
by people who wrote with Ev quite a lot. That each piece includes a
blend of professional observation and personal remembrance is nothing
more than us sticking to that part of Ev’s take on effective diffusion.His
work and (we hope)our words in this set of brief essays reflect the
wisdom of the great artist Pablo Picasso:
What is necessary is to speak about a man as though painting him.The
more you put yourself in it, the more you remain yourself, the closer
you get to truth....You ’ve got to be there, to have courage;
only then can it become interesting and bring forth something.
Thomas E.Backer
Human Interaction Research Institute
Encino, California
Brief Biography of Everett M.Rogers
Born on the family Pinehurst Farm in Carroll, Iowa, in 1931, Everett
M.Rogers attended Iowa State University (ISU) for his BA, MA, and PhD
degrees (he also served in the U.S. Air Force between his BA and MA
studies). Iowa State University in those years (the 1950s) had a great
intellectual tradition in agriculture and in rural sociology. Numerous
agricultural innovations were generated by scientists at land grant
universities and at the U.S.Department of Agriculture. Rural sociologists,
including Ev ’s doctoral advisor George Beal, were conducting pioneering
studies on the diffusion of these innovations, like the high-yielding
hybrid seed corn, chemical fertilizers, and weed sprays. Questions were
being asked about why some farmers adopted these innovations while others
did not, and also about why it takes such a long time for these seemingly
advantageous innovations to diffuse. These questions intrigued the young
Ev Rogers.
Back at the family farm, Ev ’s father loved electromechanical
farm innovations, but he was highly resistant to biological –chemical
innovations. His father resisted adopting the new hybrid seed corn,
even though it yielded 25% more crop and was resistant to drought.During
the Iowa drought of 1936, while the hybrid seed corn stood tall on the
neighbor’s farm, however, the crop on the Rogers ’farm wilted.
Ev ’s father was finally convinced.
These questions about innovation diffusion, including the strong resistances
and how they could be overcome, formed the core of Ev’s graduate
work at ISU. His doctoral dissertation was study of the diffusion of
weed spray, and involved interviewing more than 200 farmers about their
adoption decisions. He also reviewed existing studies of the diffusion
of all kinds of innovations — agricultural, educational, medical,
marketing, and so on. He found several similarities in these diverse
studies. For instance, innovations tend to diffuse following an S-curve
of adoption.
In 1962, Ev published this review of literature chapter, greatly expanded,
enhanced, and refined, as the now-legendary book Diffusion of Innovations.
The book provided a comprehensive theory of how innovations diffused,
or spread, in a social system. The book’s appeal was global. Its
timing was uncanny. National governments in countries of Asia, Africa,
and Latin America were wrestling with how to diffuse agricultural, family
planning, and other social change innovations in their newly independent
countries. Here was a theory that was useful.
When the first edition of Diffusion of Innovations was published,
Ev was an assistant professor of rural sociology at Ohio State University.
He was 30 years old. But he also was becoming a world-renowned academic
figure. The book, now in its fifth (2003) edition, is today the second-most-cited
book in the social sciences.
In an academic career spanning 47 years of teaching, research, and
writing, Professor Everett M.Rogers achieved many milestones. He held
faculty positions at Michigan State University, Ohio State University,
and the University of Michigan. Later in his career he served as Janet
M.Peck Professor of International Communication at Stanford University,
Walter H. Annenberg Professor at the University of Southern California,
and most recently was Distinguished Professor of Communication at the
University of New Mexico.
Prepared by
Arvind Singhal
Ohio University
