EFFUSION ON DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION THEORY
I spent an enjoyable Thursday afternoon last week co-presenting with Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association (WRMCA) Technical Marketing Director Pat Bauer at WRMCA’s Annual Technical Seminar.
My portion of our presentation focused on Diffusion of Innovation theory: how, why, and at what rate technical innovation is adopted by society. Pat did the heavy presentation lifting, pulling attendees through the thick fog of diffusion theory by providing practical, real-world diffusion applications in the pervious concrete stormwater system and concrete parking lot markets.
Opportunities exceeding more than 1,000,000 cubic yards annually open up for concrete contractors and ready-mix producers in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP), if these contractors, and their WRMCA-member partners, are willing to undertake the technical marking legwork.
But it won’t be easy.
As 19th century British businessman and essayist Walter Bagehot asserts:
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It makes you think your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill founded. Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.
Pervious concrete stormwater system solutions and concrete parking lots challenge industry norms and the favorite notions of project owners and specifiers.
Illogical as it seemed to the concrete promoters and technicians in attendance at the workshop, stormwater retention ponds and asphalt pavement for parking lots are the status quo in Wisconsin and considered easy buttons by project specifiers and decision makers.
Thus, in advancing the benefits of pervious concrete stormwater system solutions and concrete parking lots, concrete promoters advance the pain of new ideas.
Mr. Bauer and other Wisconsin/UP concrete promoters face many hurdles in bringing these technologies to the marketplace, and because concrete parking lots and pervious concrete pavements challenge the status quo … they are considered new technologies by specifiers.
But Pat and other concrete promoters have some help in clearing hurdles to innovation adoption, as market drivers in Wisconsin and the UP are favorable for concrete parking lots and pervious concrete stormwater system solutions. These market drivers include:
- Unstable world oil markets
- Concerns about high asphalt prices and growing concern about asphalt supply availability
- The growing acceptance of sustainability goals and of concrete as a “green” building material
- Tighter restrictions for … and stronger enforcement of … stormwater management regulations.
It will be interesting to see how ready-mix stakeholders serving 53172 take advantage of these favorable market drivers.
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