Adoption

By Allen Jay Bercero

Adoption (in software and product work) is the process by which people start using a product and fold it into their routine, from first trying it to relying on it. Getting users to adopt is often harder than building the thing: a great solution that nobody takes up still fails.

Also known as

user adoption · product adoption · uptake · (as a number) adoption rate

Don't confuse with

• Adaptation is modifying or adjusting something to fit a need or a change, such as reworking the product or a market adjusting to it. Adoption is people taking up a product; adaptation is changing something. The two words sound alike and get swapped constantly, which is exactly why this article exists.
• Retention is the next step, not the same one: adoption gets people to start, retention gets them to keep using it. (Both appear in AARRR.)

In plain English

Adoption asks “did people actually start using it?” Adaptation asks “did we change it to fit?”

Key ideas

• Adoption rate: the share of a target group that has taken the product up (for example, “30% of invited firms activated an account”).
• Friction in adoption: anything that makes starting hard, such as confusing onboarding, a steep learning curve, or switching costs. Reducing this friction is a core product job.
• The technology adoption lifecycle: Everett Rogers’s model in which a population takes up an innovation in stages: innovators → early adopters → early majority → late majority → laggards.
• The chasm: Geoffrey Moore’s addition, the dangerous gap between early adopters (who love the new) and the early majority (who want proof first). Many products die trying to cross it.

Why it’s on the Lean canvas

The Early adopters sub-field of the Lean canvas’s Customer Segments box is exactly Rogers’s “early adopters,” the narrow group willing to try something unproven. And Channels are how you drive adoption: the path that carries the product to those people.

See also

• AARRR: its Activation and Retention stages are where adoption is measured.
• Lean canvas: home of the “early adopters” and “channels” boxes.
• Prototype: an MVP is often how early adoption is tested.

References

• E. M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (Free Press, 1962). Origin of the technology adoption lifecycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
• G. A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm (HarperBusiness, 1991). Names the gap between early adopters and the early majority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm