WORKING PAPER

Speeding Growth: 8 Drivers of Fast
​Product Adoption

by Stephen Wunker

Waiting for an innovation to take off can be unbearably frustrating.

You’ve done all the research, hired the best people, produced a great product. And then…nothing. Worse, you look around and see other new gadgets and ideas become popular seemingly overnight. Why not yours?

The hard truth about innovation is that instant success is not guaranteed. A review of the most popular products and ideas reveals that while some took hold right away, others were phased in over a much longer timeframe. Take the can’t-live-without smartphone, which took 6 long years from first introduction to popularity explosion with the release of the iPhone. Or, for a more extensive timeframe, indoor plumbing – a mere 4,500 years from invention in the Indus Valley to its first broad adoption in Victorian England. What accounts for the varying adoption speeds of different innovation? Is there anything to do to move things along more rapidly?

​While there is no silver bullet for creating an instant hit, there are steps you can take to make sure your idea or product is on ​a fast(er) track to success.

​We’ve identified 8 factors that influence the adoption speed of an innovation. Not every factor is malleable but all are important to understand. Without an alignment of these 8 elements, adoption of your innovations is likely to proceed at a snail’s pace...
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Read the full working paper to uncover each elemental driver in great detail

Download the Full Working Paper

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