What is an Early Adopter?
An early adopter is someone who picks up new technology more quickly than the rest of society. In a heavily technological age, an early adopter has the newest hardware gadgets, the most innovative software releases, and often the most technical skills as well. Early adopters test out and prove the potential merits of products for the rest of the population, which slowly follows through on the growing trend. As a result, every early adopter is an important part of the process behind releasing a technological innovation. Early adopters are part of a system known as the “Diffusion of Innovations,” an idea put forward by Everett Rogers in a 1962 book of the same name. According to the book, new technology is picked up by members of society in a pattern which resembles a bell curve. At the beginning is a very small percentage of people, known as the innovators. Innovators develop new material and also jump on innovations by other people to improve them or pass them on. The early adopter, on
Originally, an early adopter was a customer or company, also known as a “lighthouse customer”, which agreed to adopt a technology or product before it hit the general market. Early adopters would be part of the test-phase of a product, giving feedback to the provider or inventor in exchange for better and more rapid customer service. In fact, early adopters often would have an employee help the designer in the design phase. This relationship gave the product designer a revenue source to continue working on the product, while the customer got access to cutting-edge technology and superior technical support. Companies still “early adopt”, while government bureaucracies and militaries also do the same. These days, the term early adopter often refers to private individuals who buy a new product or technological device before the vast majority of other customers. These early adopters tend to be affluent enough to afford the higher prices of brand new products, while also having the excess c
