Everett Rogers

Author of Diffusion of Innovations (1962), referenced in Remote — Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson to frame remote work’s “adoption curve.” The 37signals authors invoke Rogers’s model to situate distributed work as an innovation still moving through the population — early adopters ahead of a skeptical mainstream — rather than a settled norm, supporting their argument that resistance to remote work is a predictable stage of diffusion rather than evidence against it.

Context: Everett Rogers (1931–2004) was an American communication theorist and sociologist whose Diffusion of Innovations introduced the now-canonical framework of how new ideas and technologies spread through a society — and the adopter categories (innovators, early adopters, early/late majority, laggards) that go with it.

Where this appears

• Remote — Office Not Required — cited via Diffusion of Innovations to frame remote work’s adoption curve.