Another important element of Phase 1 was the analysis and application of technology innovation and adoption theory Figure 1). We selected Class A building operators because of their role in the commercial building market as "early adopters" of advanced technologies. We purposefully worked with the Building Owners and Managers Association to identify the most sophisticated and innovative building engineers and operators in California. The analysis is based on the classic work by Rogers (1983) who suggested that technology adoption can be described by five categories: innovators, early market, early majority, late majority, and laggards. As an example of how the categories differ, "innovators" pursue technology and sometimes make a purchase simply for the pleasure of exploring a new idea or device, while "early adopters" are interested in new technology for its own sake and are quick to understand and appreciate the benefits of new products.

Figure 1. Stages in the Technology Innovation-Decision Process (Rogers, 1983).

The analysis is based on the classic work by Rogers (1983) who suggested that technology adoption can be described by five categories: innovators, early market, early majority, late majority, and laggards. As an example of how the categories differ, "innovators" pursue technology and sometimes make a purchase simply for the pleasure of exploring a new idea or device, while "early adopters" are interested in new technology for its own sake and are quick to understand and appreciate the benefits of new products.

The companies selected for the O&M surveys had the characteristics that Rogers deemed important. First, they had some organizational "slack" to pursue new ideas and had developed a method to analyze innovations utilizing this slack time. Second, they had made someone in their organization responsible for the technology strategy. Although they do not have formal R&D departments, they have identified a role of technology evaluator. Finally, they had demonstrated by past performance that they could think creatively and would act on new information in previous innovations we evaluated.

After identifying the innovative operators we sought to identify the process of innovation utilized in the past by evaluating the process used to adopt related characteristic innovations. These "scouting" studies resulted in an understanding of the business and technical constraints and incentives for innovations. Specifically, we found that the technical managers responsible for innovation frequently conducted pilot studies with their own operating budgets. Furthermore, we found that the technical managers responsible for innovations were limited to evaluating simple components and were unable to undertake large scale studies of potential "system-wide" technologies because they could not justify the cost and time for such studies.

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