Innovation happened in my researched organization

by Emma

Change is happened everyday around us, such as change of wearing style, communicating skill and favorite movies . but above mentioned is all about things changed on ourselves. we can change everything on us whenever and whatever, but how about changing happened in one company or one organization? In fact, it is totally different, change would become hard to carry out, because there are many people watching, supervising and having responsibilities in what you are doing for this big family. if manager wants to do some innovation, he/she needs to do a fully preparation to persuade the boss, same level managers and even workers. Therefore change in my mind is a kind of art.

I want to share one innovation which happened in my father’s factory, this is about change of the learning room layout.

In the past years, there was no special room for taking lessons. Managers found it was energy-waste when repeatly solved the same problem for different workers. so that they thought of a plan that was making a room for learning together. Surprisingly, this proposal was accepted by

everyone.

However, problems emerged after several classes were taken, listeners replied it was boring and tedious sitting in the room, words from speaker made them sleepy. Therefore, some managers discussed whether they should add some technology equipment and change the layout of furniture.

Few weeks later, the learning room had a new look, it was installed a projector, a computer, and  the furniture laying was not mess any more, but is in order (e.g. tables are placed one row by one row). the new learning room made workers refresh, and happy to stay here. Besides, speakers not

2nd Group Activity - Diffusion of Innovations:

By Corrine


In the “Diffusion of Innovations”, diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. Diffusion is a special type of communication concerned with the spread of messages that are perceived as new ideas.

Therefore, four main elements can be summarized from the model of “Diffusion of Innovations”:

(1) The innovation
(2) Communication channels
(3) Time
(4) The social system (context)

According to the model, there are 5 adopter categories, or classifications of the members of a social system, they can be categorized on the basis of their innovativeness, i.e. the degree to which an individual or other unit of adoption is relatively earlier in adopting new ideas than other members of a social system.

(1) Innovators – 2.5%
(2) Early adopters – 13.5%
(3) Early majority – 34%
(4) Late majority – 34%
(5) Laggards – 16%

Early adopters are always opinion leaders, and serve as role-models for many other members of the social system. Early adopters are instrumental in getting an innovation, thus in the successful diffusion of an innovation.

Early adopters are a more integrated part of the local system than are innovators. Potential adopters look to early adopters for advice and information about the innovation. This adopter category is generally sought by change agents as a local missionary for speeding the diffusion process.

The early majority’s unique position between the very early and the relatively late to adopt makes them an important link in the diffusion process. They provide interconnectedness in the system’s interpersonal networks.

Laggards tend to be suspicious of innovations and change agents. Resistance to innovations on the part of laggards may be entirely rational from the laggard’s viewpoint, as their resources are limited and they must be certain that a new idea will not fail before they can adopt.

The model of “Diffusion of Innovations” can be applied in the Hong Kong social system. For instance, when the 3-3-4 education reform was first introduced, it took a long consultation period for the innovators to bring it to the public. The innovators were only a minority of the public as they were the top management people of the education system who innovated the change. When the 3-3-4 system was confirmed to be implemented, some early adopters put some academic programmes into trial or practice. Most people were early majority, the schools and people tended to follow the Government’s instruction and executed the reform. Later on, the late adopters followed the early majority to carry out the educational change. A minority of people was laggard as they were afraid to follow the change, they must be certain that the reform was successful before they could adopt. That’s why some people still adopt home schooling in Hong Kong as they are not assured of the effectiveness of the Hong Kong’s education system.

Reflections on the Diffusion of Innovations model

By Mia and Rainbow

Rogers's (2003) Diffusion of Innovations model illustrates the process of organization members through specific channels to accept new things, new concepts or new targets. Different from other models, members need to be regarded as a whole in the process. We are no longer just focus on the leaders, senior staff. In this process of change diffusion, the participants need to work together to help and share useful information, eventually to reach a consensus. In addition, in the adoption process, the new things, new ideas or new target is not static, which can be accessed and changed by participants, in order to improve efficiency.

We need to consider the following factors before we adopt this model:

Innovation, include Relative advantage, Compatibility, Complexity, Trialability, Observability.

Channels, in fact, this is a special kind of communication process, we need more than just lecturing or forcing of passive acceptance, but through some people, who are able to accept new things or have experience with the use of some new things, to share useful information with people without experience in this area, helping out those who are not familiar with the new things to change attitudes and behavior to accept and adapt to the innovation as quickly as possible.

Social system, include the roles of opinion leaders, Change Agent, change aides. Although Change Agent can affect other people because of its expertise and technology, it is lack of a common ground that will keeps people apart, and often leads to communication invalid. The Opinion Leader due to the smaller gap with other participants, able to offer people information and advice, and informal influence attitudes and behavior of others, so they have played a very active role the process of change.

Time, it will be a long time before someone start from a contact, to understand its features, finally to adopt and develop habits for the innovative things. It can be divided into Knowledge, Persuasion, Decision, Implementation, and Confirmation. Acceptability of the participants in the innovation process is particularly important. On the Basis of Innovativeness, adopter was classified as an Innovator, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards.

Here I want to talk about the model of change in my internship place. I have worked in local electric enterprises over a period of time. Its goal is to create market demand as the direction, to meet customer needs for new power marketing mechanisms, accurate groups demand for electricity, with market economy point of supply and services. After the "sell", we must keep up after-sales service work. It means power supply companies through concept of innovative service, establish a perfect service system, to improve the service levels, continuously provide high quality power to the user. So innovators consciously promote innovation, experts be organized to conduct comprehensive service standards of general, professional and special occasions. They have made a program of "Code of Conduct Marketing Service Manual." The manual rested on a basis of “Power Supply Service Specification” of State Grid, and based on the actual need of power supply service, to be distributed into 8 detailed species: common services, business office services, “95598” telephone services, repair services, electricity consumption and load management services, etc. At the beginning, only a small part of the employees accept and implement the service content of the manual. These people generally think the new program is useful, and the service is better than the old model, so their operations more quickly. Early adopters comprise leaders, supervisors, and the persons who received training and have related practice experience. Other persons still to be content with things as they are. Then, the early majority have been adopting new service manual because they aware of this program is feasible and does not want to lag behind the others. The reason why they are later than the early adopters, is due to they are more cautious than early adopters, and have their own thoughts. When services start to receive results, and gain user acceptance, with the help of experienced staff, most of them have reduced confusion, which means late majority can better service in accordance with the manual. However, in the process of innovation, there have laggards who do not want to transfer the traditional marketing model. They are often accustomed to conservative, they can be passively accept only when the development of new services become mainstream. All in all, we need to take different measures according to different levels of acceptance and situation.
    I used to work in a trade company. We persuade the subsidiary company and customer to employ new equipment and new product. The subsidiary company need to pass some official audit and the audit requires new equipment. This is a process of diffusion of innovation. It is interesting that some companies are willing to adopt the new equipment and some are not. They can be regarded as the early adopters and the other companies who do not adopt can be regarded as the late majority or laggards. The reason why they do not adopt is it costs money and the effect does not show so soon. Once the advantage of the new equipment is discovered, they will be adopted by the late majority. There are always innovators who advocate new things and products and late adopters who are reluctant to change. Oftentimes, new things always have their vitality because there are new functions and reinventions added into the old things. They can be accepted by people according to the change diffusion.

The diffusion of innovation mode

By Emma and Fay

From the model of the Diffusion of innovation, it shows the percentage of adopter raises as time flies.

The five stages represented five different groups:

(1)    technology enthusiasts(innovators):venturesome; able to cope with uncertainty

(2)    visionaries(Early adopters): respected by peers; judicious about innovations

(3)    pragmatists(Early majority) :deliberate before adopting

(4)    conservatives(Late majority):skeptical; economic necessity or peer pressure

(5)    Skeptics(Laggards) :traditional values; decisions based on what’s been done previously

In order to shorten the time of adoption or raise the percentage of early adopters, five perceived attributes of innovations need to be considered: relative advantage, Compatibility ,complexity, Trialability, Observability. And Relative advantage and compatibility are particularly important in explaining an innovation’s rate of adoption(Rogers, E. M. (2003)

I realized one interesting phenomenon related with this model. In some organizations, when one new idea or product appears, the visionaries and pragmatists behaviors seem not have a huge gap, but the essences differs. For example, in my former university, when the university decided open a platform for students to upload and download videos mainly about learning materials. At the beginning, early adopters (visionaries) are usually active net-fans students who were totally agreed and began to be active in the platform. Then almost all of materials were movies including some Chinese forbidden movies. Then the early majority (pragmatists) were mainly school teachers, they found something not good then came up with some rules. Actually they made the platform more formally. In this case, I have to say, the biggest difference between these two categories whether they adopt the new thing in an intellectual way. That is visionaries see new things with their eye closed while pragmatists with their eyes open.

There is also an interesting difference between these two

This also indicates some key points about how can we attract more people at the beginning and these people are more like pragmatists instead of visionaries in learning situation. Because learning adoption is not like selling products, learning keeps more attention on quality rather than numbers in my mind.

Crossing the chasm is another important concept which Moore begins with the diffusion of innovations theory from Everett Rogers. Therefore, how to decrease the gap between each category? It determines the effects of successful adoption of new product in a certain extent.

Moore suggests techniques to successfully cross the "chasm," including choosing a target market, understanding the whole product concept, positioning the product, building a marketing strategy, choosing the most appropriate distribution channel and pricing.( From crossing the chasm)

Under the new educational resource implementation, we cannot ignore the chasm between different levels of adoption groups.

In Moore’s book, we also have this picture to see:

It helps us to understand each category more clearly.

At Last, in Roger’s Book, the following formula is pretty clear to guide a more rapid adoption.

Greater [relative advantage, compatibility, trialability and observability] + Less [complexity] = More rapid adoption

References：

Rogers, E. M. (2003).  Diffusion of Innovations (5th Ed). New York: Free Press

Geoffrey A. Moore   Crossing the chasm› Visit Amazon's Geoffrey A. Moore Page