Getting a new idea adopted can be very difficult. This is all the more frustrating when it seems to the proponents of the new idea that it has very obvious advantages. It can be a challenge to try to introduce new ideas in rural areas, particularly in less-developed societies, where people are somewhat set in their ways—ways that have evolved slowly, through trial and error. It's all the more difficult when those introducing new ideas don't understand why people follow traditional practices. Rural sociologists and agricultural extension researchers who have studied the diffusion of agricultural innovations have traditionally been oriented toward speeding up the diffusion process (Rogers 1983). Pro-innovation bias has sometimes led sociologists to forget that "changing people's customs is an even more delicate responsibility than surgery" (Spicer 1952).

Although innovation relies on invention, and although considerable creativity often accompanies the discovery of how to use...