Diffusion of innovations

About: Diffusion of innovations is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2139 publications have been published within this topic receiving 191397 citations. The topic is also known as: diffusion of innovation & diffusion of innovations theory.

"Learning" from other industries: lessons and challenges for health care organizations.

Abstract: Although it is true that health care has several distinguishing characteristics that set it apart, analysts both within and outside the industry point to several similarities with other fields and suggest opportunities for health care to learn from other industries. Applications from other industries have been described in the literature, but the transfer of learning at health care industry level has not been examined. This article investigates health care learning from other industries in the recent decade, focusing on aviation, high-reliability organizations, car manufacturing, telecommunication, car racing, entertainment, and retail; evidence suggests that most innovative practices originate with these fields. The diffusion of innovations from other industries appears to start with a few early adopter organizations (hospitals and health systems) and influential other organizations (The Joint Commission, Institute of Medicine, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or Institute for Healthcare Improvement) pushing for the innovations. Once the trend becomes accepted, consultants and copying behavior seem to contribute to its spread across the industry. An important question to explore is whether the applications in the early adopter organizations are different (in terms of their effectiveness) from those in the rest of the industry. Another intriguing issue is to examine whether other industries learn from health care organizations.

Adoption and diffusion of encoded archival description

Abstract: In this article, findings from a study on the diffusion and adoption of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) within the U.S. archival community are reported. Using E. M. Rogers' (1995) theory of the diffusion of innovations as a theoretical framework, the authors surveyed 399 archives and manuscript repositories that sent participants to EAD workshops from 1993-2002. Their findings indicated that EAD diffusion and adoption are complex phenomena. While the diffusion pattern mirrored that of MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC), overall adoption was slow. Only 42% of the survey respondents utilized EAD in their descriptive programs. Critical factors inhibiting adoption include the small staff size of many repositories, the lack of standardization in archival descriptive practices, a multiplicity of existing archival access tools, insufficient institutional infrastructure, and difficulty in maintaining expertise.

Analyzing Precision Agriculture Adoption across the Globe: A Systematic Review of Scholarship from 1999–2020

Abstract: Precision agriculture (PA) is a holistic, sustainable, innovative systems approach that assists farmers in production management. Adopting PA could improve sustainable food security and community economic sustainability. Developing an understanding of PA adoption attributes is needed in order to assist extension practitioners to promote adoption and better understand the innovation adoption phenomena. A systematic review of literature was conducted to investigate attributes that foster PA adoption. Thirty-three publications were examined, and four themes were found among the reviewed publications. The results were interpreted using Rogers’ diffusion of innovations framework to address the research objectives. Relative advantage and compatibility were two dominant attributes needed to strengthen the adoption of PA, and the complexity attribute was rarely communicated to promote the adoption of PA. The systematic review indicated the rate of farmer’s PA adoption does not occur at the highest potential levels due to inadequate communication of PA attributes from change agents to farmers. Extension field staff need professional development in communicating the five PA adoption attributes to farmers in order to improve PA adoption and enhance local sustainable food security. Thus, authors recommend future complexity studies from agricultural extension specialists’ perspectives to comprehend demonstratable approaches to motivate farmers’ adoption of PA.

A review of Six Sigma implementation frameworks and related literature

Abstract: This paper presents a review of Six Sigma focusing on implementation frameworks/models in the literature. The work is a part of a research project aimed at developing a Lean Six Sigma implementation framework for Indonesian SMEs. Most implementation frameworks examined used the concept of critical success factors in their development. In this paper, the authors examine four implementation frameworks found in the literature from two perspectives. Firstly, from a critical success factor perspective and secondly from the perspective of Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory. None of the frameworks examined comprehensively address issues suggested by Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory. The most robust framework appears to be the one developed by Burton and Sams. Our research suggests a customized implementation framework needs to be designed for Indonesian SMEs based on Rogers’ diffusion of innovations approach, but also drawing from literature on critical success factors.

Diffusion of innovation in systematic review methodology: why is study selection not yet assisted by automation?

Abstract: Introduction Systematic reviews, the foundation of much Evidence-Based medicine, are suffering from increasing ‘data deluge’: reviewers often need to manually assess many thousands of titles and abstracts to determine their relevance. Automation has been advanced as a potential solution; but given that its efficacy was first demonstrated in 2006, why is it not yet widely used? The Diffusion of Innovations framework by EM Rogers is used to structure an exploration of why this might be the case. Discussion According to Rogers, five characteristics affect the rate of adoption of innovations: those perceived as having greater relative advantage, compatibility, trialability and observability, and less complexity, will be adopted more rapidly than others. The relative advantage of automation has been demonstrated empirically, though usually in narrowly focused reviews in clinical areas, rather than more challenging areas for automation, such as public health. Detailed methods and procedures for their use have yet to be established, addressing transparency, replicability and reporting practices. While issues concerning the compatibility of new technology with existing infrastructure are probably surmountable, the use of automation may challenge contemporary notions of what constitutes a systematic search and how publication bias is addressed using sensitive search techniques. The remaining factors are interrelated. The technologies are complex, both to understand and to deploy. This affects the trialability of automation: technical expertise is required and there are thus few opportunities for reviewers to observe others using these technologies. Conclusion Further technical and empirical work is needed where systematic reviewers work with information and computer scientists to develop solutions which have a demonstrative relative advantage and which are clearly compatible with the needs of systematic reviewers and their users. Such work may have a significant role to play in addressing the deluge of new research publications which threaten to overwhelm systematic review processes.