[MarkusQ]

I get frustrated by this sort of unthinking thought piece.

To pick one example:

"Rogers proposed a bell curve with five distinct adopter categories: innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%), and laggards (16%). This distribution of adopters remained remarkably consistent, regardless of the particular innovation being studied, from agricultural practices to technological advancements."

The distribution of adopters was defined, not observed. There's nothing remarkable about it staying the same when the same definition was applied to different products, any more than it would be noteworthy that the first fifth of the people to arrive at a party make up 20% of the attendees.

[_alternator_]

I’d also note the lack of editing in parts of the article. There’s a sentence that starts with “[Something like] <text of draft sentence>”.

[runlaszlorun]

This might be what you're saying, and it's been a long time since I read Rogers' original work, but IIRC Rogers was following the standard deviations of the normal distribution but wasn't without merit in finding common characteristics within said group.

But def incorrect as written in the article.