This is from Geoffrey Moore’ Crossing the Chasm. It’s not supposed to be a change curve, or a process. It’s about audience segmentation: its about understanding the market for an innovative new product. Crossing the chasm is about taking the product from a niche market to mainstream. Something like a fitbit or an amazon alexa fit the bill.
However I’ve totally seen it used in the way you describe.
I see things differently to you, my friends.
As a service provider I find it a useful model to see that a) early adopters have different needs to the majority, so we shouldn’t optimise products too early in their uptake, and b) there will always be some people who don’t want to use the service.
To be honest, if I can provide useful services to the majority of staff then I’m not going to sink effort into understanding the laggards. “Still don’t want to use it? Fine, don’t”. Researchers might be interested in why they’re not adopting it but I’ll be on to the next project because we’re there for the whole institution and the majority want us to keep going doing useful stuff.