Diffusion of Innovations

[120mm]

I hope no-one minds my continual updating of my reading lists, but this book strikes me as being essential to implementing change within the military, or any group.

Diffusion of Innovations, Fifth Edition by Everett M. Rogers is, so far, a terrific book. I've read through chapter 1 and am impressed. It explores why certain people and groups adopt innovation, and why certain people and groups do not. It frames innovation in both technology and systems as a social, not a technical issue.

I reiterate, a very, very good read.

[selil]

I recently read it.

It is interesting how he takes crops and applies it to different places, times, and technologies.

[LawVol]

I appreciate the comments I've read on books on this site. Perhaps a new "book review" forum would be useful. Once you've read abook, you could post your thoughts and others could use it to determine whether the book might be useful to purchase. Or do we have something like that here and I'm just showing off my lack of computer skills? :D

[120mm]

I think there might be some application to changing the way large organizations, like the military, do business. Adoption of the COIN model of warfare, or the "Unit of Execution" b.s. that we recently went through.

The transformed "Unit of Action/Unit of Execution/RSTA/Blah, blah, blah" units were especially tough to sell to anyone but the most dedicated "true believers" because the concepts forced the end-user to entirely change his/her language to a strange, vague and buzz-word rich terminology. This alone caused myself, among others to not want to adopt the concept.

Hetero- vs. Homophily is a good concept to describe why incorporating Social Scientists into military ops is a bad idea. If we are serious, as a military, about developing Anthropology Warriors, they need to be "home-grown" or at least developed in a parallel fashion with constant military contact.

And all this from farmers in Iowa who were slow to adopt hybrid corn.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is frustrated with their organization's resistance to accept a technology or idea.