Definitions for "Early adopters"
People who choose new products carefully and are often consulted by people from the remaining adopter categories
the campus test bed phase of Early Harvest, is pushing forward the deployment of core middleware at thirteen US campuses. Based on this experience, Early Adopters will develop roadmaps for other campuses to follow in their own deployments. Both Early Harvest and Early Adopters are funded by the NSF.
the second group of the adopter categories in the diffusion process of new products, services, or ideas, i.e., those individuals who adopt a new product after the innovators; are very often opinion leaders and generally motivated by social acceptance and a desire to be trendy. See adoption process, adopter categories, adoption curve, diffusion process, innovators, early majority, late majority, and laggards.
People who are keen to use a new technology for its functionality, and often despite its poor quality of experience.
For new products, these are customers who, relying on their own intuition and vision, buy into new product concepts very early in the life cycle. For new processes, these are organizational entities which were willing to try out new processes rather than just maintaining the old.