Innovations spread by imitation, running from superior to inferior status, at a rate that accelerates then saturates.
Tarde's 1890 laws, seventy years before Rogers's diffusion research reached the same S-curve. Tarde had no data and reasoned from observation, which is why the priority is rarely credited.
In practice
- A tailoring detail worn by a duke appears on merchants within a season and on labourers within a decade, and never travels the other way.
- A convention used at three admired firms is in every job advert within two years, and nobody can name the argument that settled it.
- Standing
- The direct ancestor of diffusion-of-innovations research seventy years later.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change