Early adopters and limited resources

2018-04-27

I heard on Sunday that there was a measles outbreak in Okinawa and that it might spread during the Golden Week holidays.

By Friday, Nakano, Tokyo, and Nihonbashi were also buzzing with cases of the disease as soon as it appeared.

Why do early adopters occur?

One cannot interpret a benefit one has not earned.

Those who have benefited first expect to benefit in subsequent years, and those who have never benefited do not.

Discounting of value by waiting occurs.

Early adopters increasingly value first-mover advantage, the rest do not

Expected profit

The cost of waiting by being inundated with

Waiting by constant capacity

If the outflow is constant, the profit is reduced by sharing it among a large number of people

It's easy to see why the person who came early to get it in this case would benefit, but not why they came early to get it.

There are fluctuations in the speed of information transmission.

A model in which we can make choices that make it easier for information to come to us, but we act immediately once the information comes to us.

In reality, isn't the problem that the information is coming but it takes time to decide to act?

In the model where information is passed randomly from the surroundings, the case where the action is taken based on the first piece of information, and the case where the action is taken after multiple gatherings and increased confidence, the latter is naturally delayed in time.

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