The Diffusion of Innovations

Every so often a book is written by a scientist, for scientists, but it's implications could go so much further. One such book is The Diffusion of Innovations by Rogers.  It's available on Amazon here. I would recommend that every community worker, ministry and missionary read this book. It's almost a manual with guidelines on how to introduce change into a society. However, it is couched in such scientific jargon that it almost needs a dictionary to be understood. Why do scientists like to say the word 'salient' instead of 'important'?
So to combat this, I've decided to write out a layman's summary of the most important points I found.

The Dumbed Down Version of The Diffusion of Innovation
People tend to catch on to a new idea and use it faster if:

• It seems to be significantly better than the old idea.
• It can be tried out in a small form first, so people can see that it works before committing 100%.
• It seems to be a natural continuation of traditional ideas or values.  
• It seems easy to understand.
• It produces visible rewards quickly.

Pretty obvious huh?

Next, when people are going to decide to use a new idea, there's a whole process behind their thinking.

1. They get information about it.
2. They form an attitude about it.
3. They decide to use it (or not).
4. They actually put it into use.
5. They check to get confirmation that it is still a good idea.

This is kind of a good thing to know if you are say, trying to persuade someone to stop a bad health practice like maybe smoking. Not all people are ready to stop the next day, some might just need more information first and you can't rush them really. And some people might have really decided in their heart, but just haven't got around to doing it.

Then, not everyone jumps onto an idea at the same time. Usually a new idea starts off slow until a decent group of people have got it (about a 1/3rd) and then it begins to snowball as the majority catch on, until it finally slows down as the last people get it. 

1. The first few people to use a new idea are called innovators. They're usually high risk takers, wealthier so they can afford a few bad calls, more likely to travel out of their own social clique, but often the majority think they're so risky that they're not really followed. 
2. Then come the opinion leaders. These people are usually highly respected in their own communities, they have more formal education, are literate, have higher social status and are upwardly-mobile. When these people take an idea, the majority begins to pay attention. Personality-wise, they're also more likely to be empathetic, flexible, capable of thinking in abstract (like guessing how things wil turn out), rational, can handle risk, smarter, more favorable to science, change and education. Not fatalistic. They're also more likely to travel outside their own community and meet people who want change, yet be very social in their community, watch mass media and actively research new ideas.
3. The early majority jump on the boat after the opinion leaders have shown them that the idea is good. They're more likely to rely on someone else's opinion rather than trying it for themselves. But when these guys get in on the action they create a critical mass, which means enough people are using it that it seems like everyone needs to get one. From here on the action speeds up rapidly.
4. The late majority join in when it seems tried and true. They usually have the opposite characteristics to the opinion leaders, like they travel less, have less resources, less education, less social, less access to mass media etc.
5. The laggards join at the very end. Often this could be because they're actually at a disadvantage, such as they didn't have the money to buy in on it at the beginning or they were geographically isolated. Sometime's it just because they're more traditional.

So then, if you're a person who wants to introduce change or a new idea, these are the steps you have to take:

1. Get people to see a need for change
2. Share information
3. Diagnose problems
4. Get people to want to change
5. Get people to actually change.
6. Make sure that the change stays and they keep it up
7. Try to end their dependence on you.

Here's some characteristics that would make you more successful at introducing change:

• Put in a lot of effort making contact
• Be focused on the people rather than the idea or sponsor of the idea
• Make sure the way you spread out the idea is compatible with the needs of the people you're changing.
• Be empathetic
• Seem like you're of a similar social background as the people you're working with
• Have credibility (not just a salesman)
• Work with the opinion leaders of that community
• Teach the community how to evaluate future changes e.g. Teaching everyone germs exist helps people adopt better health practices later.

Now there's two ways to look at the flow of ideas.

Centralised: Someone at the top of a hierarchy makes a decision on the new idea and then it gets passed down. This way the idea might be put in place quickly and be better used with higher technology, but sometimes the people lower down don't like it so the idea doesn't really work. Works better is the people in the group are more alike.

De-centralised: Different people, who have less in common with each other, are inventing all over the place and then sharing their information. Usually comes up with better ideas that suit the needs of the people who actually have to use them. However, because it's more informal, sometimes important ideas don't get shared to the people who need to hear them. Aslo because everyone is inventing, this way works better if the idea is a low-tech one where you don't need specialist skills to use it.

What about if you're trying to change an organisation?

There's two stages

Planning

1. Make an agenda. You gather information and figure out the problem.
2. Match a new idea or invention to the problem.

Implementation

1. Reinvent the idea to suit your organisation or re-structure your organisation to suit the idea.
2. Clarify the idea to everyone, make sure everyone understands and is on the same page.
3. Routinize the idea so every gets so used to it, that it doesn't seem like a novelty anymore, but instead becomes part of the organisations normal operations or identity.

And then the aftermath

Most new ideas have consequences, some unforeseen, some bad as well as the good. A lot of innovations actually widen the gap between the rich and the poor, where the rich hear of it first, jump on board with the new idea, have more resources so they can invest, make money faster and get richer, while the poor are less educated, move slower, have less to start off with and so just stay relatively poor.

This can be prevented if there is:

• Focus on developing new ideas for the poor.
• A social organisation so that the poorer people can access the same resources as wealthier people (like a community bank).
• A way that the poorer people have a voice in the planning and execution of an idea, as well as the goals of a program.
• Focus on communicating with the poorer people more, and facilitating change especially for them.
• A more de-centralised way of spreading ideas that also takes into account people's traditional knowledge.

Pretty much, the ways to go wrong and create havoc when introducing an new thing or idea are many. Hopefully this helps.

Speaking of Globalisation

Missionary mistakes in changing cultures

Among the Doni tribe, in Irian Jaya, men sleep in a long house and then each wife and little or unmarried children would have their own house. The men would plan their activities all together in the long house. Also men would not sleep with their wives during pregnancies or while the baby was breast-feeding. That's about 3 years of abstinence. Basically this was a form of community birth control.
Then some missionaries (not all) believed that the nuclear family was important, so they convinced the man to move in with their families. Then it all got awkward. There was not enough space, so there would be full grown daughters having to work out how to get changed while their father was in the house. The men did not get enough time to plan their activities so the communication in the village broke down. Women started having too many babies too closely together because the men couldn't help it when they had to be in the same house every night, and then the babies would die of starvation because there was not enough milk to go around... In the end, the men gave up and moved back into the long house.

10 traits that make cultures change

Taken from James Harrison's Culture Development Project - an analysis of cultures around the world and how they develop. He came up with 10 characteristics that were seen over and over again in cultures that developed faster.

• A culture that emphasizes the future and progress (time-oriented cultures) will progress faster than static cultures that focus on the present.
• Work ethic - cultures where work is central to living and rewards develop faster.
• Finances - cultures that save and invest for the future rather than spend and consume immediately (or try to distribute it to everybody immediately) will change faster.
• Education - when it is valued and viewed as a key to progress the culture will progress, if it is seen as of no value except to the elite, the culture will stagnate.
• Advancement - when people are advanced based on merit rather than connections.
• Community - where trust and identification extends beyond family (if you only trust in family and exploit everyone else you will not develop).
• Ethical code- progressive cultures have rigorous moral codes, static cultures have corruption as a way of life. 
• Justice and fair play- progressive cultures will have justice for all, static cultures only extend justice to intimate connections of friends and connections. Think of Paul under the Roman Empire claiming his citizenship after the beating from his jailor, giving immunity - what about all the other people who were beaten?
• Authority - in progressive cultures it is dispersed and horizontal vs static cultures have strong vertical authority and is hierarchical.
• Religion - Progressive cultures have less religious influence on civic life. (Personally I would debate that this depends on which religion since Christianity promotes all the other progressive traits).

Harrison concludes that culture is indeed either a hindrance or an asset for progress, but having shown that correlation he then proposes that responsible leadership by a country’s political representations must assume the duties of saving people from their own limitations.

Anxiety and Uncertainty Management Theory

Gudykunst' Anxiety and Uncertainty Management Theory (AUM). The greater the anxiety and unpredictability in meeting strangers, the worse your communication and cultural adaptation is. But too little anxiety (carelessness) or too much predictability (staying in your own bubble) also is bad. As missionaries in a foreign culture you need to find the happy middle between being overwhelmed and not risking enough.

An example of communication breaking down as anxiety rises.

Myths

Here's a Doni myth to explain why men and women have different jobs. This was an illustration for the point that cultures develop divisions of labour based on gender, physicality or necessity.

In the begin the 4 first people (two men, two women) saw the light of the sun from the inside of a hollow tree. They crawled out, saw the earth was good and so brought two dogs and two pigs up. Then they heard more people coming up the tree, but they decided they wanted to keep the earth to themselves so they plugged the hole with a rock.
At first, the men kept pigs and the women had the bows and arrows. Then the women met their first prey but when they went to pull back the bow, they were not strong enough,so their arrows did not fly far enough. So the men took the bow and arrows and they did hit their prey, so from then on, men hunted and women tended livestock.

Language fun

In looking at culture and language in missions, there have been some fun examples.
In the Doni language of Papua New Guinea, they greet people with scatological phrases.
Here's the literal translations and the meaning translations:

Literal: 'Let me eat your faeces'
Meaning: There is nothing bad about you, I will accept it all (isn't that sweet?)

Literal Male form: 'Let me grab you by the testicles' and Female form: 'Let me touch your vulva'
Meaning: You are safe with me even your most intimate parts.