Adopting Innovations
Innovation is a creative new idea in the form of a device or method that can serve as a better solution for a need. In our market economy we have been flooded with lots of innovations so much so that we are not even able to make out whether a particular innovation is relevant to us or not. Majority of mobile phone companies are bringing newer versions and models almost every few months. As customers we are confused what we really want to get out of the phones we are buying. I actually don’t know much about how these companies strategise their innovations and marketing but I can relate this spread of innovations to some of my observations in my own field of agriculture and social development.
I was working on a project promoting a new technique of rice cultivation called System of Rice Intensification, which required farmers to change the way rice was planted. As a result of its adoption, they would have reduced the inputs required for cultivating rice and they would have got very high yields. Being part of a well defined project, it had its own targets of reaching out to certain number of farmers in a specified area in a specific period. Our teams were campaigning from village to village. The intervention required farmers to change their behaviour and they were not supposed to get any major support in terms of material inputs besides training and regular technical knowledge support. It was a realising moment when we heard majority of the farmers asking for free fertilisers and seeds in return for their own behaviour change. It was contradicting everything we were promoting.
Another interesting fact that was observed that a set of few farmers had readily agreed to test the innovation we were proposing them. This was the lot who was innovative and was always willing to try relevant newer things in their farming activity. For these farmers the potential for incremental productivity of rice made more sense. It also made more sense for us to focus on this set of farmers. The best results for the planned improvement in the productivity, reduction in the cost and increase in the incomes were achieved by this lot. If we would have known this differential relevance and behaviour beforehand, we would have strategised it differently and would have reached out to only those for whom it could make the difference in the first instance. It would have saved us lot of unfruitful efforts and of course costs.
Looking at this whole effort from a farmers’ perspective gives different view point as now I am a farmer myself and I get people following up after me for adoption of their own products and technologies. Being an innovative farmer or consumer would require me to actively seek newer information and understand it properly. The new changes brought in through adoption could be disruptive to what I have been habituated to. All this requires me to be innovative myself. I have to think whether at that particular juncture of time I am willing to be innovative or not? Is it safer or better to just wait and watch while first few adopt the new changes? Sometimes it is just safe and convenient to follow the herd than carrying the loads of dilemmas and confusions. I can also shun these innovations altogether because meditating or sleeping is of higher importance.
In fact these behaviours have been extensively studied by sociologists and there is an old Law of Diffusion of Innovations that has been in practice in marketing even in the present. Interested folks can google it to know more.
---------------------
I was working on a project promoting a new technique of rice cultivation called System of Rice Intensification, which required farmers to change the way rice was planted. As a result of its adoption, they would have reduced the inputs required for cultivating rice and they would have got very high yields. Being part of a well defined project, it had its own targets of reaching out to certain number of farmers in a specified area in a specific period. Our teams were campaigning from village to village. The intervention required farmers to change their behaviour and they were not supposed to get any major support in terms of material inputs besides training and regular technical knowledge support. It was a realising moment when we heard majority of the farmers asking for free fertilisers and seeds in return for their own behaviour change. It was contradicting everything we were promoting.
Another interesting fact that was observed that a set of few farmers had readily agreed to test the innovation we were proposing them. This was the lot who was innovative and was always willing to try relevant newer things in their farming activity. For these farmers the potential for incremental productivity of rice made more sense. It also made more sense for us to focus on this set of farmers. The best results for the planned improvement in the productivity, reduction in the cost and increase in the incomes were achieved by this lot. If we would have known this differential relevance and behaviour beforehand, we would have strategised it differently and would have reached out to only those for whom it could make the difference in the first instance. It would have saved us lot of unfruitful efforts and of course costs.
Looking at this whole effort from a farmers’ perspective gives different view point as now I am a farmer myself and I get people following up after me for adoption of their own products and technologies. Being an innovative farmer or consumer would require me to actively seek newer information and understand it properly. The new changes brought in through adoption could be disruptive to what I have been habituated to. All this requires me to be innovative myself. I have to think whether at that particular juncture of time I am willing to be innovative or not? Is it safer or better to just wait and watch while first few adopt the new changes? Sometimes it is just safe and convenient to follow the herd than carrying the loads of dilemmas and confusions. I can also shun these innovations altogether because meditating or sleeping is of higher importance.
In fact these behaviours have been extensively studied by sociologists and there is an old Law of Diffusion of Innovations that has been in practice in marketing even in the present. Interested folks can google it to know more.
---------------------
Comments