How technology spreads.
“For a given technology, Rogers identified five crucial factors that influence adoption rates: relative advantage (the perceived benefits of using a new technology over existing alternatives), compatibility (alignment of the technology with existing social values and needs), complexity (the ease of understanding and using the technology), trialability (the ability of new users to experiment with the technology), and observability (the visibility of positive results of others using the technology). Rogers’ theory also emphasizes the importance of communication channels and social systems in the diffusion process, noting that innovations rarely spread through pure technical merit alone, but rather through social networks and interpersonal influence. The importance of word-of-mouth recommendations for diffusion explains why many superior technologies fail while inferior ones sometimes achieve widespread adoption—for diffusion, the social mechanisms of technological recommendation often matter more than the intrinsic qualities of the innovation itself.”