Fabio Arcangeli, Paul David, Frank Engelman, Christopher Freeman, Massimo Moggi, Richard Nelson, Luigi Orsenigo, Nathan Rosenberg, Michele Salvati, G. N. von Tunzelman, two anonymous referees, and the participants at the meeting of the Committee on Distribution, Growth, and Technical Progress of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), Rome, November 16, 1985, have helped with various redraftings. A particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of Moses Abramovitz. This work has been undertaken at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, as part of the research program of the Designated Research Centre, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) is also gratefully acknowledged. The statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of Stephano Brioschi, Ilaria Fornari, and Giovannu Prennushi.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2726526

Sources, Procedures, and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation

Reviews indicate that the dominant perspective in the diffusion of innovation literature contains proinnovation biases which suggest that innovations and the diffusion of innovations will benefit adopters. As a result, it is difficult to either address or begin answering the questions: when and how do technically inefficient innovations diffuse? or when and how are technically efficient innovations rejected? This article has two goals: (1) to develop a typology that focuses attention on three less dominant perspectives that can be used to guide research on these questions and (2) to suggest how organizational scientists can develop more encompassing theories of innovation diffusion and rejection by using the theoretical tensions that exist between the dominant perspective and the three perspectives developed in this article. These resolutions are important because they indicate that processes which prompt the adoption of efficient innovations may coexist with processes that prompt the adoption of ineffici...

Managerial Fads and Fashions: The Diffusion and Rejection of Innovations

In this paper we review the extant innovation research from three fields—economics, organizational sociology and technology management—in order to find points at which the fields' approaches and assumptions overlap. By comparing research methods and approaches along three dimensions, stage of adoption, level of analysis, and type of innovation, we found, firstly, that studies from the three fields can be re-mapped into five more specific groups. We then illustrate how research from different groups can be cross-fertilized to help management of innovation in organizations. The paper suggests that knowing the ways in which different groups of studies differ from each other may lead to a more accurate understanding of the relative value of innovation research from each group, for both theorists and managers.

A review of innovation research in economics, sociology and technology management

The authors provide an empirical test of the effects of competition on the adoption of technological innovations by organizations. They follow the conceptualization developed in the model they prop...

Technology Diffusion: An Empirical Test of Competitive Effects:

We all know of innovations which either made their creators a fortune or which led to their downfall. It is easy to retrospectively explain success as a stroke of genius or failure as a blatant mistake. Easy in retrospect…but what about innovation in the making? How does the innovator navigate the pitfalls which threaten him?

The key to success in innovation part i: the art of interessement

ADVANCES in technology are widely regarded as major sources of improvements in the competitive positions of firms and industries as well as of increases in national economic growth rates and standards of living. Because the benefits of such advances obviously depend on the extent to which they are utilized, considerable research has been focused on the diffusion of technological innovations. Most of these studies have sought to measure the dimensions of technological diffusion and to explain differences in diffusion patterns among innovations, industries and nations as well as changes in such patterns over time. As is to be expected during the exploratory probing of major new problems, however, the most valuable contributions made so far have been to reveal the need for more penetrating concepts, better measures, more comprehensive analytical frameworks and wider samplings of the variegated phenomena to be encompassed. Shortcomings in the theoretical work have seldom been directly harmful to industrial managements because they rely on their own more detailed knowledge of the relevant facts and problems. But such research reports have tended to mislead government officials and scholars concerning the depth and accuracy of our understanding of the causes and effects of differences among, and changes in, observed diffusion patterns. The following paper surveys the literature of the past 20-25 years in this area, and provides a critique of some of its shortcomings.'

Technological Diffusion in Industry: Research Needs and Shortcomings

THE impacts of an innovation on an industry and on larger sectors of the economy clearly depend on how rapidly it comes into use. In appraising such effects, the initial decisions to be made concern the measures to be used and the level of aggregation to be studied. And the choices to be made among the wide range of possible alternatives obviously depend on one's purpose. For example, Lynn's study [i6] of the 'diffusion' of twenty major inniovations was concerned essentially with the growth of new industries rooted in major innovations and hence used the absolute value of outputs and their percentage shares of Gross National Product as measures. In another study [I7, PP. 133 if.], Mansfield was concerned with how rapidly given innovations had spread from enterprise to enterprise in four industries, so he used the percentage of major firms introducing the innovation over a given period as his measure. Neither of these approaches seems to provide a generally applicable basis for assessing the extent to which innovations displace predecessor processes and facilities. Lynn's reliance on total output is clearly inappropriate for established, as differentiated from new, industries.' Mansfield's concern with how many have adopted an innovation clearly ignores the extent of dependence on the innovation, and his concentration on major firms may be open to the possibility of unrepresentativeness-not only because smaller firms may account for significant proportions of output, but also because larger and smaller firms may differ in their responsiveness to innovations [I7, PP. I55 H.]I. The objective of this paper is to assess the rates at which production comes to be dominated by new processes or facilities. Hence, its focus is on tlle industry as a whole and the measure used is the proportion of total output accounted for by the innovation. In particular, the analysis is concentrated on the early rates of diffusion of fourteen

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2097611.pdf

Diffusion of Major Technological Innovations in U.S. Iron and Steel Manufacturing

This paper draws on an extensive array of theoretical and empirical studies covering a variety of industries in the U.S. and elsewhere in order: (a) to review common shortcomings found in evaluating technological innovations both before and after adoption, as well as in generating proposals for new innovations; and (b) to suggest means of improving each of these efforts.

Strengthening managerial approaches to improving technological capabilities

/pdf/explorations-in-managerial-economics-3ohjwh2oz9.pdf

Explorations in Managerial Economics

A commonly held view is that innovation, deriving directly from expenditure on research and development, brings increased productivity, lower costs, increased profitability and growth, and that these relationships form a economically virtuous circle. However, this view is not supported either by the research results reported here or by other empirical findings. A richer and deeper framework of analysis than this “mythology” provides is required for management decision making in innovation and in this and the subsequent paper the author outlines the necessary features of such a framework. A model of a “network of productivity relationships” with six components is described which traces the effects of innovation, at any point in the network, on input productivities. The model points up the futility of single input measures of innovatory effects. This network is then combined with cost factors to show the effect on categories of unit costs and on total unit cost. Finally, profitability is related to the physical and cost factors to provide managerial control ratios which offer the relevent criteria by which innovation many be appraised. The history of innovation in the U.S. Basic Steel Industry is examined in the light of the model described above and hypotheses are proposed to identify possible productivity and cost effects of innovation with a view ot improving general predictive capability of the results of any given type of innovation.

Bela Gold

Papers

Technological Diffusion in Industry: Research Needs and Shortcomings

Diffusion of Major Technological Innovations in U.S. Iron and Steel Manufacturing

Strengthening managerial approaches to improving technological capabilities

Explorations in Managerial Economics

Technology, productivity and economic analysis