Tiger BufordYour Orthopedic Industry Expert (free today)

How to find early adopters in Ortho.

16 Aug 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:36

In this brief multi‑speaker discussion, the participants reference Everett Rogers’ classic work Diffusion of Innovations, emphasizing that the spread of new technologies or techniques in orthopaedic surgery is driven more by social dynamics than by pure technical merit. They then pose the practical problem of locating early‑adopter surgeons who can act as opinion leaders and accelerate broader uptake. The conversation concludes with the view that identifying such influencers is as much an art—relying on intuition, relationships, and contextual insight—as it is a scientific exercise.

The book by Everett Rogers, the rural sociologist, called Diffusion of Innovations, should be on everybody's shelf. Because what he argues is that adoption of innovations is more of a social process than just a technical process.
So how do you find early adopters that are going to influence other surgeons?
That's the thing. I think it's art. I think it's as much art as it is science finding those guys.
I really do. It's such an art, I think, more than a science. And it is so fluid of someone's an early adopter of something, but not another. And how do you scale that? It's so hard to do.