Showing papers on "Diffusion of innovations published in 1995"

Network Models of the Diffusion of Innovations

Abstract: Part 1 Introduction: Diffusion of Innovations and Network Analysis Diffusion Versus Collective Behaviour Datasets Analysed Contagion. Part 2 Prior Research on Thresholds and the Critical Mass: Epidemiology Geography Markets and Economics Collective Behaviour Interactive Communication Technologies Public Opinion Decay Processes Subgroups. Part 3 Relational Diffusion Networks: Opinion Leadership Group Membership Personal Network Density Personal Network Exposure. Part 4 Structural Diffusion Networks: The Strength of Weak Ties Centrality Positional Equivalence Structural Equivalence Relational vs. Structural. Part 5 Threshold Models of Diffusion: Threshold Models Network Thresholds Personal Network Exposure Threshold Lags Structural Network Thresholds. Part 6 Critical Mass Models of Diffusion: Inflection Points Structural Measures of the Critical Mass Finding Critical Mass Testing Critical Mass Definitions. Part 7 Empirical Analyses of Threshold Models: Micro- and Macrolevels of Analysis Adopted Categories A Threshold/Critical Mass (T/CM) Model. Part 8 Other Network Models and Methods: Other Threshold Models Corrected Thresholds Event History Analysis Complementarity Dyads. Part 9 Conclusions and Discussions: Applications Contrasting Network Thresholds with the Classic Diffusion Model Conclusions Limitations Future Research.

Diffusion of Innovations: Modifications of a Model for Telecommunications

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to explain the main elements in the diffusion of innovations model, and to apply them to the special case of the diffusion of new telecommunications technologies like fax, E-mail, mobile telephones, INTERNET, and others.

The origins and development of the diffusion of innovations paradigm as an example of scientific growth.

Abstract: This article traces the emergence of the basic paradigm for early diffusion research created by two rural sociologists at Iowa State University, Bryce Ryan and Neal C. Gross. The diffusion paradigm spread to an invisible college of midwestern rural sociological researchers in the 1950s and 1960s, and then to a larger, interdisciplinary field of diffusion scholars. By the late 1960s, rural sociologists lost interest in diffusion studies, not because it was ineffective scientifically, but because of lack of support for such study as a consequence of farm overproduction and because most of the interesting research questions were thought to be answered.

Diffusion of an effective tobacco prevention program. Part II: evaluation of the adoption phase

Abstract: This paper presents the results of theory-based intervention strategies to increase the adoption of a tobacco prevention program. The adoption intervention followed a series of dissemination intervention strategies targeted at 128 school districts in Texas. Informed by Social Cognitive Theory, the intervention provided opportunities for districts to learn about and model themselves after 'successful' school districts that had adopted the program, and to see the potential for social reinforcement through the knowledge that the program had the potential to have an important influence on students' lives. The proportion of districts in the Intervention condition that adopted the program was significantly greater than in the Comparison condition (P < 0.001). Stepwise logistic regression indicated that the variables most closely related to adoption among intervention districts were teacher attitudes toward the innovation and organizational considerations of administrators. Recommendations for the development of effective strategies for the diffusion of innovations are presented.

Innovation history and competitive advantage: a resource-based view analysis of manufacturing technology innovations.

Abstract: The resource-based view of the firm provides the logic for hypothesizing that firms will have different longitudinal patterns of manufacturing innovation adoption in plants. Early innovators were h...

The Use of Geographic Information Systems in Local Government

Abstract: Countless land-related decisions are made by local units of government. Municipal governments and local offices of state and federal agencies deal with real property, development, infrastructure, and so forth. Many other records such as health and crime data are referenced by geographic location. Individual decisions of local units of government typically have a limited scope and impact. However, as a whole, they shape the way land is used and the built environment is managed. Geographic information systems (GIS) have tremendous potential at this level, both in allowing decision making to be more objective and in elucidating the cumulative effect of incremental decisions. It is also the level of government with a wide range of experience and success with GIS. Local agencies seemingly have the most difficult time using analytic and decision-support aspects of the technologies. Because great potential and great problems exist, this article is focused on GIS at the local level. GISs are now commonly accepted tools in public administration. GIS literature includes description of many kinds of successful applications; missing are anecdotes about orphaned technologies, alienated users, withdrawn funding, and other incidents that undoubtedly occur. To account for performance promised by purveyors of the technology, we need to ask "does the technologies. provide better information?" - faster, cheaper, more reliable, more precise, more available, and more understandable? It is critical to note that the question is "does," not "can." The question concerns its actual uses - not its potential. Successful use of GIS depends on technical choices and on the ability, capacity, and willingness of an organization to absorb and use new forms and quantities of information. Organizational and institutional factors may be a greater barrier to successful use of GIS than technical constraints (e.g., Dueker, 1987; Chrisman, 1987; Innes and Simpson, 1993). To make this innovation a useful component of decision-making processes, we should understand the technical, organizational, and institutional impediments to successful GIS use. In this article, I review GIS adoption and use in local government and discuss why successful use has come slowly in many jurisdictions. My observations are derived primarily from GIS implementation in Wisconsin, where local agencies participate in the Wisconsin Land Information Program (Kuhlman, 1993). This program has provided incentives and funding for land records modernization since 1990. This has accelerated GIS implementation and thus provided an opportunity to study factors influencing technology diffusion (Ventura et al., 1993). In the terms of Rogers' (1983) paradigm for diffusion of innovations, Wisconsin local agencies are typically in adoption or implementation phases, while counterparts around the country are in awareness and understanding phases - just learning about GIS. Additional evidence comes from "participant observer" activities, primarily assistance in the design and implementation of geographic information systems with many kinds of agencies. This has made it possible to probe deeply into organizations, to become familiar with personal traits, attend staff meetings, and so forth, and not just read final reports, attend public meetings, or accept the word of interviewees. Adoption and Use of GIS in Local Agencies To answer questions about the use of GIS, we must distinguish adoption from the many kinds of uses for which the technology is suited. Adoption, at least of hardware and software components of a GIS, is readily observed. GIS vendors' reports indicate that adoption is proceeding at a rapid pace. This is supported by studies of adoption as detailed below. Because the applications of GIS and related technologies are so diverse, it is not possible to assume from adoption that the technology is being used for decision making. In most cases, initial applications of GIS are within the realm of mapping and inventory. …

Technological Diffusion with Social Learning

Abstract: This paper attributes the slow diffusion of innovations to an informational externality in the process of their adoption. When a new technology arrives its profitability is uncertain but each firm can learn progressively through observing the adoption experience of other firms. Given this prospect of social learning, every firm would prefer that other firms adopt before it does because this enables a better-informed adoption decision. In the absence of explicit coordination, the firms could end up in a sequence of waiting contests; this results in staggered adoptions even when all firms are ex-ante identical. The pace of diffusion is determined endogenously in this model and shown to depend on the characteristics of the innovation and of the learning process.

Technological Diffusion with Social Learning

Abstract: This paper attributes the slow diffusion of innovations to an informational externality in the process of their adoption. When a new technology arrives its profitability is uncertain but each firm can learn progressively through observing the adoption experience of other firms. Given this prospect of social learning, every firm would prefer that other firms adopt before it does because this enables a better-informed adoption decision. In the absence of explicit coordination, the firms could end up in a sequence of waiting contests; this results in staggered adoptions even when all firms are ex-ante identical. The pace of diffusion is determined endogenously in this model and shown to depend on the characteristics of the innovation and of the learning process.

Product development : meeting the challenge of the design-marketing interface

Abstract: Partial table of contents: PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: A MARKETING PERSPECTIVE. Where We've Been and Where We're Going in New Product Development Research (S. Hart). A Framework for Technology Strategy (A. Nagel). MANAGING THE DESIGN-MARKETING INTERFACE. The Interfaces Between Design and Other Key Functions in Product Development (R. Davies-Cooper & T. Jones). Approaches to Design Management in the Product Development Process (M. Bruce & B. Morris). NETWORKS AND RELATIONSHIPS. A Management Framework for Collaborative Product Development (M. Bruce, et al.). Developing Capabilities for Innovative Product Designs: A Case Study of the Scandinavian Furniture Industry (B. Jevnaker). LAUNCH STRATEGIES. Successful Launch Strategies: New and Future Research Efforts (E. Hultink & H. Robben). ADOPTION AND DIFFUSION. Diffusion of Innovations in Business-to-Business Markets (R. Frambach). CONTEMPORARY ISSUES. Product Liability Issues in Product Development (H. Ritsema). Index.

The diffusion of innovations in sport organizations: an evaluative framework.

Abstract: The level of participation and degree of excellence attained within a given sport is dependent, at least in part, on how that sport is organized. Sport has traditionally been organized in an ad hoc way, relying on volunteers who were committed to the particular sport. It is now clear that to encourage higher levels of participation and international excellence, new ideas about organizing need to be diffused to those involved in the management of sport. The literature from the business environment demonstrates that the process of innovation requires, first, that new ideas be diffused to organizations and, second, that these ideas then be translated via a process of organizational change within the adopting organization so that their usage is appropriate. This literature demonstrates that these processes of diffusion and appropriation are problematic and heavily dependent on the contextual features of the adopting organization. This paper presents a framework for understanding these diffusion and appropriat...

Audio information services and the electronic media environment

Abstract: Recent developments in technology have transformed the telephone from an exclusively interpersonal medium to an interactive electronic mass medium. The diffusion of innovations framework was applied to examine whether adoption of audiotext and 1–900 services is related to use of functionally similar entertainment media. Findings suggest that adoption of audio information services was more powerfully explained by media use patterns than demographics.

Landcare: Participative Australian approaches to inquiry and learning for sustainability

Abstract: There has been a quiet revolution in land management research and extension in Australia, particularly in the field of land conservation, in which new models of interaction between farmers and the professionals working with them are emerging. This paper introduces a small selection of many possible initiatives, drawing upon more detailed explorations of these projects and programs (Campbell 1994a). This experience endorses the notion that the linear model of technology transfer—based on the assumptions of the theory of diffusion of innovations, in which information is likened to a static commodity produced by research and marketed by extension to progressive farmers, eventually diffusing to the rest—is inadequate for explaining knowledge processes in farming, and even less useful in generating models of research and extension that reflect the transition from the productivist era to the sustainability era in agriculture (Campbell 1994b; Pretty and Chambers; Roling). Sustainability is a contested, constructed, contextual chameleon of a concept. It frustrates conventional institutional arrangements and ways of thinking about research and extension. Getting serious about sustainability means grappling with large and unfamiliar scales in space and time; technical uncertainties and risk; a multiplicity of stakeholders with diverse values and interests …

Innovation, technology, and the economy

Abstract: Innovation, Technology and the Economy brings together the seminal articles and papers of Edwin Mansfield who during the past forty years has pioneered research in the economics of technical change, a field of enormous importance for analysts and decision makers. This collection presents an unusually full and detailed quantitative analysis based largely on data collected from firms and other economics units. These attractive volumes, which include some of the most frequently cited studies in the field, are concerned with the process of industrial innovation, the nature, composition and effects of industrial research and development, the relationships between technical change, economic growth and inflation, the diffusion of innovations, international technology transfer, public policy toward civilian technology, and intellectual property protection. These topics are central to many current debates among both economic theorists and policy makers.

Certificate-of-need regulation and the diffusion of innovations: A random coefficient model

Abstract: In this paper, we examine empirically the effect that certificate-of-need regulation by state health planning organizations has had on the speed of diffusion of a relatively new medical technology—haemodialysis. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that a requirement that investments be subject to certificate-of-need review has significantly slowed the rate of adoption of this particular treatment modality. In subjecting this hypothesis to empirical verification, we estimate a random coefficient model. This approach allows us to make more efficient use of the available data than the traditional two-stage approach to modelling diffusion processes wherein separate logistic functions are first estimated over the time series observations followed by hypothesis tests conducted over the cross-sectional observations. We find evidence that certificate-of-need regulation slows the spread of haemodialysis technology.

New Technologies, Scale and Scope, and Location of Production in Developing Countries

Abstract: The paper presents the preliminary results of an international research project undertaken in Brazil, India, Mexico, Turkey, Thailand and Venezuela on whether and to what extent flexible automation and associated organizational techniques have diffused to developing countries, and what their impact has been on product, plant and firm scale and scope. It shows that while diffusion has been rapid in the countries under study, particularly in the case of computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) machine tools, it was far slower than in developed countries. Diffusion of new organizational techniques was also slow. The paper analyses the data on product scale, and concludes that NT do not necessarily lead to reductions in product scale, product variety or scope. On the contrary, the data show significant increases in variety and availability of sizes of the products on offer, not because of new products, but due to vertical integration in the production of components. The paper concludes that the output or capacity of most firms surveyed increased as a result of the adoption of NT, due to reduction in waiting times, better factory and labor organization, increased efficiency of CNC machine tools and higher capital and marketing 'fixed' costs. Such findings imply that scale will continue to be an impediment to entry into industrial production by small developing country firms.

The diffusion of innovations in the world textile industry : does a country's level of economic development matter?

Abstract: This paper provides empirical evidence on how the international diffusion of industrial process innovations is affected by a country's level of economic development. It analyses annual data on newly installed machinery in the spinning and weaving industries, where open-end rotors and shuttleless looms, respectively, represent easily identifiable innovations. A variable coefficient model, based on an S-shaped diffusion curve, is estimated from pooled data to assess the impact of the level of economic development on the diffusion of each innovation. It is found that the level of economic development affected the timing of the start of the diffusion process, but not the speed of diffusion within each country.