The focus of lecture this week was determining what makes an idea or innovation take root in society easily while other ideas struggle to be accepted. I found it interesting that the main determinant of whether or not an innovation is accepted is not how useful it will be to society as a whole. Instead, how easily the innovation can be incorporated into people’s routines and how much it will benefit the user are the most important determinants for its acceptability. The lag in acceptability of antiseptic technique was the perfect example of how a pressing health issue remained unsolved because the solution was an added hindrance in the routine of the user, in this case surgeons.

I really enjoyed the New Yorker article “Sharing Slow Ideas” because it touched on important health issues that I originally thought would need complex solutions. Instead, the solutions to many of these issues are as simple as skin-to-skin contact between a baby and its mother. The first-hand accounts of the nurses in the low-resource hospitals and the mentors that helped incorporate new practices at these hospitals were also very informative. Usually, after a new technology is developed I assume that everyone will immediately begin using that technology. I never thought about how the change that the technology poses can be intimidating and prevent it from being accepted into society. Overall, I appreciated the different perspective that this week’s material provided. It forced me to think past the design and development process and to think of what will happen after a solution is found and how to make that solution actually take root in society.