One of the important lessons M-PESA success allows us to draw is its technology diffusion and adoption cycle. In most technologies, the diffusion of technology follows a linear pattern, with the innovators, and early adopters adopting first, followed by the early majority and the late majority, and finally, the laggards. This is depicted by the picture 1 (source Wikipedia) below
Linear diffusion of technology
However, in MPESA’s case, there is a two tail adoption converging on the centre, causing an exponential diffusion of technology. The early adopters of M-PESA are young urban workers who wanted to transfer money to their folks living in rural areas. However, in order to receive the money, the receiver, typically an illiterate resident in rural Kenya, also needed to have an M-PESA account. Normally, these illiterate rural residents are considered the laggards, and are expected to be the last adopters of any new technology. However, in MPESA’s case, the early adopters and the laggards adopted M-PESA simultaneously, creating an explosion in network effects. The diffusion of technology in MPESA is depicted in the picture 2 below.
Two tail diffusion of technology
This kind of diffusion of technology as seen in M-PESA’s adoption cycle is seldom seen in any other technology. This brings out important lessons for designers of technology products and social games. There are opportunities and dangers in designing such products that would allow two tailed diffusion of technology. The opportunities lies in the fact that use of technology by the innovators and early adopters would not be possible and meaningful without one other group adopting the technology, and hence there will be exponential adoption as innovators and early adopters force the diffusion in other groups in order to even test the waters. On the other hand, such requirements that atleast two groups adopt a technology to be of meaningful use to any of the users, can create significant entry barriers for even innovators to test the waters.
Some of the other applications that I could think of where such two tail adoption is possible, are social games. For any social game, diffusion follows a linear pattern as described in picture 1. But say, if we design a social team game for families that requires individual families to form family teams, and compete with other family teams, we can induce a two tail diffusion. In such family games, the teen age kids, who are the innovators and early adopters, would recruit their older family members, who are normally the late majority and the laggards, to join their teams in order to play against another family team. This will automatically increase game adoption and get on board the early adopters and the late majority simultaneously. However, for such diffusion to be made possible, the games must be compelling enough for teenage kids to exhort their older family members to play the games. So a better way to create this two tail diffusion is to create compelling games that can be adopted by single user, and then create new avenues to play team form of the same game, and thus increase adoption.
