Innovation

Diffusion

What is innovation diffusion?

● “Diffusion is the process in which an innovation is communicated through
certain channels over time among the members of a social system”. 1

Rogers, E. M. 2003. Elements of Diffusion. Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Ed. NY: Th Free Press. p.5
Diffusion of Social Innovations
● Common features for diffusion
○ Generative – new forms in different contexts
○ Simple ideas spread more rapidly
○ Inspirational ideas spread more easily
○ Often require social movements and corporate and community support
● Function of four elements:
○ innovation
○ communication channel
○ time
○ social system

Murray et al. 2010. Scaling and diffusion. The Open Book of Social Innovation. The Young [Link] 5

Innovation Decision Process

Persuasion Implementation Confirmation

Knowledge Decision Reinvention Discontinuation

 Innovation Decision Process: KNOWLEDGE
● COGNITIVE stage leading to exposure to an innovation’s existence
● Three types of knowledge:
○ Awareness knowledge – that the innovation exists and what it is
○ How-to knowledge – how it can be used/implemented for maximum benefits; more
complex the innovation, more extensive and difficult is this knowledge.
○ Principles-knowledge – the theory behind the innovation; most clients would tend to view
this as beyond their domain, and unnecessary; but this is important if such knowledge is
lacking in the client system
● Selective exposure
○ “…the tendency to attend to communication messages that are consistent with own
beliefs and attitudes” (Rogers, 2003, p. 171)
● Selective perception
○ “…as the tendency to interpret communication messages in terms of individual’s existing
attitudes and beliefs” (Rogers, 2003, p. 171)

Characteristics of early knowers

● more educated
● higher social status
● more exposure to mass media
● richer interpersonal channels
● more contact with change agent
● more social participation
● cosmopolite background
Innovation Decision Process: PERSUASION
● AFFECTIVE stage
○ favorable/unfavorable attitude
○ change in attitudes, not necessarily in the direction favored by change agent;
● Selective Perception is important in this stage
● Forward planning of potential benefits of adoption
○ More specific information is sought – often from peers who have used the innovation
earlier

Innovation Decision Process: PERSUASION

● Knowledge-Attitude- Practice (KAP) – gap:
○ Even if knowledge is used, and favorable attitudes are formed, actual practice might
be different
○ likely especially for PREVENTIVE innovations – those that prevent an eventuality from
happening, especially if the probability of the eventuality is low
● Addressing KAP-Gap: often through “Cue-to-action”:
○ naturally (a personal incident, e.g. illness in family leading to health insurance)
○ by change agent
○ positive experience of peer (i.e. word of mouth)
Innovation Decision Process: DECISION
● Decision to adopt easier if opportunity for trial provided
○ Individual trial
○ peer (when it vicarious experience leads to decision)
○ demonstration

● Rejection can be of two types:

○ Active – when the innovation is considered for adoption, but rejected
○ Passive – when the innovation is never considered for adoption at all
● In some situations, Knowledge-Persuasion-Decision sequence may be
changed to Knowledge-Decision-Persuasion
○ Individual freedom is less due to some arrangement
○ Collectivist culture – group pressure

Innovation Decision Process: IMPLEMENTATION

● Usually follows directly from the decision stage
● Involves overt behavior
● Ends when the “new” idea is no longer considered to be “new”
● Issues in implementation likely to be more serious if:
○ the adopter is an organization
○ where the decision makers are different from implementers
Innovation Decision Process: RE-INVENTION
● Innovations are not usually implemented in toto, but often modified to the
individual’s context
● Often happens during the implementation stage,
● More common than assumed
● “Re-invention proofing” - Is it desirable?

Innovation Decision Process: RE-INVENTION

● Re-invention is likely:
○ in the latter stages of the diffusion process as later adopters learn from the experience of
early adopters
○ to lead to higher rate of adoption
○ to lead to degree of sustainability of the innovation – “…degree to which an innovation
continues to be used over time after a diffusion program ends” (Rogers, 2003, p. 183)

● Designing for re-invention:

○ innovations consist of “core” elements and details – the former is likely to retained across
implementation sights, but the latter can be changed
Innovation Decision Process: RE-INVENTION
● Reinvention predicted on innovation, adopter and change agent characteristics
● Innovation characteristics:
○ relatively complicated and difficult to understand – less likely to be reinvented
○ general concept or tool with many possible applications, e.g. internet
○ coupling of elements – tightly coupled elements make re-invention difficult [modular versus integral
architectures]
○ designed to solve a wide range of problems – re-invention likely to be higher when heterogeneity of
adopters and their problems is higher
● Adopter characteristics
○ detailed knowledge of the innovation
○ pride in ownership of re-invented innovation – by changing the original innovation, local authorship
can be claimed
○ organization structure of adopter may require re-invention
● Change agent
○ may influence changes in the innovation while recommending to adopters

Innovation Decision Process: CONFIRMATION

● May reinforce the decision to adopt the innovation, or may reverse it also
● Cognitive dissonance in KAP stages:
○ awareness stage, individual becomes aware of possessing less knowledge, and seeks to
remove dissonance by seeking more information
○ if knowledge is available, and there is favorable attitude, but not put to practice, then
dissonance is removed by actually implementing the innovation
○ on implementation
■ further information may go against the innovation, wherein dissonance is reduced by
stopping use of the innovation
■ if one earlier had rejected the innovation, then further information may create
dissonance to motivate acceptance
Creating demand and supply for social innovations
● Ensure Supply
○ Demonstrate effectiveness – investments in monitoring and evaluation
○ Adapt to reduce costs and improve effectiveness
○ Reshape to scale up with different kinds of economy besides scale
● Increasing the supply of social innovations
○ Creating organizational capacity to deliver
○ Growth through people – organizational spin-offs, training personnel
○ Mobilizing existing capacities
○ Securing supply chains for expansion
○ Adapting existing models
○ Creating open brands where citizens and partners can contribute

Murray et al. 2010. Scaling and diffusion. The Open Book of Social Innovation. The Young [Link] 5

Creating demand and supply for social innovations

● Perspective of users important
○ creating demand
● users may be co-producers of innovations
● Demand can be expressed through
○ Markets
○ State
○ Public commissioning on behalf of citizen
● Create Demand
○ Persuade that there is unmet need
○ Persuade organisations & individuals to bear the cost
● Routes – Advocacy, raising awareness, championing

Murray et al. 2010. Scaling and diffusion. The Open Book of Social Innovation. The Young [Link] 5
Creating demand and supply for social innovations
● Leverage the role of transmitters
● Recognize different conception of organization and scale
○ Economies of information rather than physical resources
● Collaborative networking rather than focus on organizational growth
○ Organizational growth
○ Collaborations
○ Distributed organizations operating through peripheral nodes
○ Consortia, federations, licensing, mergers and acquisitions
○ Social franchising – balancing central codification and peripheral experimentation

Murray et al. 2010. Scaling and diffusion. The Open Book of Social Innovation. The Young [Link] 5

“Perceived” features of innovations that help diffusion

● “Relative advantage” – in economic, social prestige, convenience, and satisfaction
● “Compatibility” – consistent with existing values, norms, and past experience of potential
adopters
● “Complexity” – difficulty (or ease) of understanding how the innovation works
● “Trialability” – extent to which potential adopter has opportunity to try out the innovation
● “Observability” – extent to which results of innovation adoption are visible to others
● “Re-invention” – innovations are not usually implemented in the received form; rather
adopters are likely to tweak with the invention, and it gets modified as it diffuses.
Innovations differ in the extent to which they can be so modified, but the ability to
re-invent the invention is associated with greater adoption (Rogers, 2003, p. 17)
● “Clustering” – Clustering of technologies is more effective in diffusion of new technologies,
as each supports the other synergistically
Rogers, E. M. 2003. Elements of Diffusion. Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Ed. NY: Th Free Press. Chapter 1.
Planning for Diffusion ● Innovation characteristics
● Networks
● Adopters

Communication networks
● Homophily
○ communication between similar people – spreads innovation horizontally and
within cliques
○ if several homophilous groups present, then change agents should work with
different sets of opinion leaders to target different homophilous groups
● Heterophiliy
○ communication between dissimilar people – spreads innovation vertically and
between cliques
○ if heterophilous groups present, then change agent should target few opinion
leaders who are at the top of socio-economic hierarchy, with higher education
levels, exposure to mass media, cosmopolite, innovative, and have greater
contacts with change agents
 Opinion leaders
● MONOMORPHIC: when the opinion leader is influential only on one aspect
● POLYMORPHIC: when the leader is influential in a variety of subjects
● Identifying opinion leaders – four methods:
○ sociometric method:
■ limit the number of persons to be indicated
■ present a roster of all individuals
○ key informants – identify persons who are important in the system (e.g. religious leaders,
political leaders etc.) and ask them about opinion leaders
○ self-designating – asking respondents degree to which they are able to influence others in
the system
○ observation – has high validity, but is most effective in small systems only, and the
observed might be aware that they are under surveillance; used rather infrequently

Opinion leaders
● Compared to followers, opinion leaders tend to have:
○ greater mass media exposure
○ more cosmopolite
○ greater contact with change agents
○ more social participation
○ higher socio-economic status
○ more innovative: this is a dicey issue – if the opinion leader is very innovative,
then there is a possibility that he becomes alienated from the followers, who
might start doubting his opinions – so too elite opinion leaders are
inappropriate in very traditional settings. Thus, opinion leaders must exercise
prudent judgement and help to reduce uncertainty among followers
Adopter categories
● Differences in the time it takes for different types of individuals to adopt an
innovation; accordingly:
○ Innovators (who actively seek out innovations and adopt very quickly)
○ Early adopters
○ Early majority
○ Late majority
○ Laggards

Adopter types: Innovators

● 𝜇 - 2σ and below
● “venturesomeness”
● interest in new ideas
● financial resources to take risks
● communication with like minded interested parties in cliques
● ability to understand new and complicated technologies
● cosmopolite
 Adopter types: Early adopters
● 𝜇 - σ and below (13.5%)
● “Respect”
● Localite
● Highest degree of opinion leadership than any category

Adopter types: Early majority

● 𝜇 and below (34%)
● “Deliberate”
● seldom positions of opinion leadership in a system
● important link between early and late adotpters
● innovation decision period is relatively longer
 Adopter types: Late majority & Laggards
● Late Majority
○ 𝜇 + σ and above (34 %)
○ “Skeptical”
○ innovations approached with a lot of caution and scepticism
○ norms must definitely support the innovation
● Laggards
○ 𝜇 + 2σ (16%)
○ “Traditional” most localite in outlook and likely to be most isolated
○ likely to have limited financial resources, and hence most risk averse

Managing stakeholders for institutional change

Savage G.T. et al (1991). Strategies for

Assessing and Managing Organizational
Stakeholders. The Academy of Management
Perspectives. 5 (2): 61-75