Technology adoption lifecycle

The technology adoption lifecycle is a sociological model that describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation, according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups. The process of adoption over time is typically illustrated as a classical normal distribution or "bell curve". The model indicates that the first group of people to use a new product is called "innovators," followed by "early adopters". Next come the early majority and late majority, and the last group to eventually adopt a product are called "laggards".

The demographic and psychological (or "psychographic") profiles of each adoption group were originally specified by the North Central Rural Sociology Committee, Subcommittee for the Study of the Diffusion of Farm Practices, by agricultural researchers Beal and Bohlen in 1957. The report summarized the categories as:

The model has subsequently been adapted for many areas of technology adoption in the late 20th century.

The model has spawned a range of adaptations that extend the concept or apply it to specific domains of interest.

In his book Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore proposes a variation of the original lifecycle. He suggests that for discontinuous or disruptive innovations, there is a gap or chasm between the first two adopter groups (innovators/early adopters), and the early majority.

In educational technology, Lindy McKeown has provided a similar model (a pencil metaphor) describing the ICT uptake in education. In medical sociology, Carl May has proposed normalization process theory that shows how technologies become embedded and integrated in health care and other kinds of organisation.

Wenger, White and Smith, in their book Digital habitats: Stewarding technology for communities, talk of technology stewards: people with sufficient understanding of the technology available and the technological needs of a community to steward the community through the technology adoption process.

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