Rogers, Everett M. (1931–2004)

Everett M. Rogers was born on March 6, 1931, in Carroll, Iowa. In an academic career spanning 47 years, he wrote 36 books and some 425 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports. His clear prose has left an indelible mark on our understanding of how innovations (new ideas and practices) diffuse in societies.

Rogers almost skipped college. He wanted to farm. One day in 1948, a high school teacher drove Rogers to Ames, the home of Iowa State University (ISU) where he enrolled in agriculture. Numerous agricultural innovations were being generated at ISU, and its rural sociologists were conducting studies on the diffusion of such innovations as hybrid seed corn and chemical fertilizers. Questions were asked about why some farmers adopted these innovations and some did not. Rogers found these questions to be especially intriguing given, back home, he knew his father loved electro-mechanical farm innovations but resisted adopting biological-chemical innovations (such as the new hybrid seed corn even though it yielded 20% more crop and was drought resistant).

Questions about innovation diffusion, including accompanying resistances and how communication could help overcome them, formed the core of Rogers's graduate work at ISU. His 1957 doctoral dissertation analyzed the adoption of a cluster of agricultural innovations among farmers in Collins, Iowa. In reviewing existing diffusion studies in various fields (agriculture, education, marketing, and so on), he found marked similarities: Innovations, for instance, tended to diffuse following an S-shaped curve of adoption. This finding was of great interest to scholars because of its deductive and parsimonious potential. For instance, marketing scientists, epidemiologists, demographers, and political scientists appreciated the predictive potential of S-shaped curve given it elegantly describes an exponential growth curve.

In 1962, Rogers published this literature review, greatly expanded as the Diffusion of Innovations. The book provided a comprehensive theory of how innovations diffused in a social system. The book's appeal was global; his timing was uncanny. In the 1960s, dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, and South America gained their political independence and were searching for ways to effectively communicate agricultural, health, and family planning innovations. [Page 723]Rogers's book proved to be of tremendous practical value in furthering such efforts.

Many believe that Rogers's scholarly contributions are defined by his uncanny ability to explain how macro processes of system change were linked to micro (individual and group) level processes. The explanations he offered showed both how micro-level units of innovation adoption were influenced by system norms, as well as how system change was dependent on individual action. In this sense, diffusion of innovations theory is one of the few social theories that connect macrowith micro-level phenomena.

Not surprisingly, as per the Social Science Citation Index, the Diffusion of Innovations is the second most cited book.