When has there been a headlong rush into systemic change without early adopters proving that it was feasible? I can't think of any examples. Sometimes a person or movement is a catalyst or focal point, but that's after the fact of conditions already extant, and people already exploring the solution.

Electronic communications you think of Bell and Marconi, perhaps Antonio Meucci, sure! Other inventors. But these guys didn't bring the changes about. Large corporations, stock exchanges, newspapers found the utility of telegraphs, and of course the history and evolution is complicated from there, to the modern wonders that we carry in our pockets. No doubt there were politicians and movements along the way, people informing other people, but in hindsight they were just hanger-ons to an evolution already in progress and driven by the free market.

I'll ask you the same question you posed: what percentage of the adoption of cell phones come from the newspapers and stock exchanges using telegraph? What percentage from the politicians who facilitated the infrastructure? The question doesn't seem very meaningful when put into this perspective.

Look at the graph on this page regarding motor vehicle registrations since 1900. Like many of the growth graphs of this kind of thing, it is roughly an S-curve, or series of S-curves. Slow initial growth (early adopters, hobbyists etc) followed by exponential growth and a plateau. Does the process start at all without the slight initial portion in the graph? Does advocacy really even matter in the exponential growth section?