DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS (1) Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation (2) Cowan’s The Consumption Junction (3) Opening the “black box” of technology diffusion {Elisa Oreglia}

The “Social-Technical Continuum”? Social Histories ANT Diffusion of Innovations SCOT Consumption Junction Social-Technical Gap Technological Determinism Social Determinism Technological Change  one artifacts supplants another Technological Determinism  an artifact reorganizes social structures Technological Diffusion  how an artifact diffuses through society (Cowan, p261) The “Social-Technical Continuum”?

Diffusion of Innovations: The Core Question “How do consumers arrive at the decision to choose one technology over its alternative?”

Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers http://blog.kitetail.com/2007/09/12/could-accelerated-diffusion-rate-negatively-impact-innovations/ http://www.designdamage.com/when-to-adopt-social-media-for-your-business/ http://suewaters.wikispaces.com/Rogers

Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers Rogers: rural sociologist, son of farmers, interested in agricultural issues in US and developing countries: “Categorizing the Adopters of Agricultural Practices” (1958) “Characteristics of Agricultural Innovators and Other Adopter Categories” (1961) “Diffusion of Innovation” (1962-2003) Rogers & the I School: “Emphasis on diffusion as information-exchange among participants in a communication process” (xvi preface 1995 edition) “The diffusion of innovations is essentially a social process in which subjectively perceived information about a new idea is communicated. The meaning of an innovation is thus gradually worked out through a process of social construction.” (xvii 1995)

Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers

4 elements of diffusion: Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers 4 elements of diffusion: Innovation (perception of innovation) Communication Channels Time Social Systems Vignettes Btw: “The Fable of the Keys” http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html

Failure & Success are equally important to understand diffusion Diffusion of Technology - Cowan “… asking both what interest such a consumer might have had and what sort of network might have existed at that time to bring a stove into a home.” (Cowan, p269) Failure & Success are equally important to understand diffusion Stoves: past and present of diffusion (http://www.aprovecho.org/lab/index.php)

Diffusion of Technology - Cowan Cowan, p270

- group work (4-5 people), presentations, discussion Diffusion: Opening the “black box” experiment Goal: To “open up the “black box” of diffusion (the final stage).” (Cowan) What: Drawing from today’s readings, devise a plan for Nokia to regain market share in mobile phones: - group work (4-5 people), presentations, discussion - be as general or as specific as you wish (e.g. company-wide plan, or target a specific country/age group/etc) - use specific concepts from the readings (e.g. concepts like “opinion leaders/change agents,” “perceived attributes of innovations,” etc if referring to Rogers, “who sold, at what price, were there wholesalers, etc” if referring to Cowan)

Importance of DoI research: Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers Importance of DoI research: Diffusion follows a pattern Importance of social networks (‘strength of weak ties’ follows in the wake) Xiao et al. on Diffusion & Games (“The rich traces users leave in the form of social networks and interactions online have started to enable researchers to conduct large-scale studies of diffusion patterns” p2) Attention to marginal populations & developing countries Work-in-progress

The problem of the ‘network’ described by Cowan Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers Critiques to DoI: Innovation: what is it, exactly? Time: on/off? Long-term? Social Systems The problem of the ‘network’ described by Cowan

(self)-criticism of DoI (ch.3) Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers (self)-criticism of DoI (ch.3) Pro-innovation bias (“innovation should be diffused and adopted by all members of a social system, should be diffused more rapidly, the innovation should be neither re=invented nor rejected.” p100) Individual blame (“If the shoe doesn’t fit, there’s something wrong with your foot” p115) Time variable difficult to measure because it relies on recall Problems in determining causality (“Cross-sectional survey data are unable to answer many of the “why” questions about diffusion… The pro-innovation bias in diffusion research, and the overwhelming reliance on correlational analysis of survey data, often let in the past to avoiding or ignoring the issue of causality among the variables of study.” p123) Equality problem (esp. in relation to developing countries)

Diffusion of Innovations: Descriptive, yes; Predictive? “The S-Shaped curve only describes cases of successful innovation, in which an innovation spreads to almost all of the potential adopters in a social system. Many, many innovations are not successful. The S-curve, it must be remembered, is innovation-specific and system-specific, describing the diffusion of a particular new idea among the member-units of a particular system, The S-curve of diffusion is so ubiquitous that students of diffusion may expect every innovation to be adopted over time in an S-shaped pattern. However, some innovations do not display an S-shaped rate of adoption, perhaps for some idiosyncratic reason or another… The main point here is not to assume than an S-shaped rate of adoption is an inevitability. Rather, the shape of the adopter distribution for an innovation ought to be regarded as an open question, to be determined empirically.” (Rogers, p261)

Technological Determinism Social Histories ANT Diffusion of Innovations SCOT Consumption Junction Appropriation Social-Technical Gap Technological Determinism Social Determinism The “Social-Technical Continuum”