The two rural sociologists intuitively sensed what later diffusion scholars were to gather more detailed evidence to prove : that the heart of the diffusion process consists of interpersonal network exchanges and social modeling by those individuals who have already adopted an innovation to those individuals who are influenced to follow their lead. Diffusion is fundamentally a social process.
Study of the invisible college of rural sociologists investigating diffusion as of the mid-1960s identified the researchers who first utilized a new concept and/or methodological tool in studying diffusion. Ryan launched fifteen of the eighteen most widely used intellectual innovations in the rural sociology diffusion research tradition. So Ryan played key roles in forming the classical diffusion paradigm