How does organisational context impact spread and adoption

Those who know me, know I am critical of the continued use of Roger's Diffusion Curve as a means of telling people how and how to plan for the spread and adoption of good practice. If you read Roger's work in depth you will understand its limitations.

One of these is the lack of attention to context. It's fairly obvious to anyone involved in spread and adoption of good practice that leadership, organisational culture and readiness to change etc. are all important in the process. The problem is, although many models and frameworks are drawn up to show how context is important - which is an excellent first step - there is a shortage of published work on the topic.

A key problem is that those who publish ignore the contextual factors.  A recent review paper by Emmens, Weiner & Fernandez looks at this issue.


Health Educ Behav. 2012 Feb;39(1):87-105. Epub 2011 Jul 1.
Systems antecedents for dissemination and implementation: a review and analysis of measures 

Does opinion leadership change over time? New Research

I'm pleased to see useful research is being done to clarify further what we mean by opinion leadership. Too often I hear people reducing what is a very complex topic to a simple slide of Roger's characteristics. Roger's initial work on the Diffusion of Innovations was researched and published before the age fo the Internet and before many staff were born. We need updates and we need to grasp a deeper understanding of the complexities.

There's a new paper out.
Implement Sci. 2011 Oct 11;6(1):117. [Epub ahead of print]
Opinion leaders and changes over time: a survey.
Doumit G, Wright FC, Graham ID, Smith A, Grimshaw J.


I've posted the conclusions to this paper below - and recommend you read the original.


"CONCLUSIONS:
Opinion leaders identified in this study were not stable over a two-year time period and generally appear to be monomorphic with clearly demarcated areas of expertise and limited spheres of influence. These findings may limit the practicability of routinely using opinion leaders to influence practice."

Gartner's Hype Cycle is more useful than the Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Curve

The classic Diffusion of Innovation curve was created by Everett Rogers back in the 60's, before many improvement facilitators were born.The terms, early adopter, majority, laggard etc have survived because they provide an explanation for something that is often difficult to fathom - how different groups of people respond differently to the same innovation. I have written at length (see previous posts and books) about the limitations of this theory and it inability to predict or provide guidance about what to do next.

Gartner introduced a theory in 1995 designed to explain what happens when a product or innovation is hyped, and then goes through various stages to acceptance. I like this theory because it steps away from the position of blaming people for not doing something and focuses more on the intrinsic value of the innovation or product.

Image from Wikipedia: Hype Cycle

The Trigger is the first breakthrough event that starts the interest in the product/innovation. This is followed by the peak of inflated expectations where the optimism for application outweighs the difficulties. The focus is on the possibility of the product/innovation. The trough of disillusionment comes when the failures start stacking up, expectations are not met, or something new comes along and this idea is no longer fashionable.  The slope of enlightenment may turn up years later when the original idea is tweaked and adapted and made more applicable. The plateau of productivity is reached when the product/innovation becomes mainstream due to its stability and usefulness.

Obviously, this curve will have different shapes for different products. Here are a couple of exercises:

1. Take one product/innovation which you believe to be at the Plateau of Productivity, and track back, seeing how the curve shapes with regards time and visibility (visibility = talked about, in the press, on agendas etc)
2. Map your current products, innovations and ideas on the cycle and see what you learn. Are they grouped in one area? What might you need to do to manage the transition to the next phase?

Let me know how you do by filling in the comments section below.