ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the technology adoption life cycle, customer adoption and diffusion of innovations. It explains that for lead customers, adoption extends beyond the start-up's new product application to the technology and start-up organisation. The challenge for the entrepreneurial firm is to first obtain the venturesome innovators' interest, and then to subsequently address the needs of the other groups, taking into account their different risk propensities and attitudes. The degree of a market's adoption of a new product at a given point in time is called penetration level. The spreading of a new technology and its application in a market is called diffusion. Rapid diffusion suggests that the differences (e. g. needs and norms/values) between innovators and subsequent groups are small, therefore, the market is rather homogeneous. Lead customers are ahead of the market trend and experience problems before other customers do.
