1. 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}

2. 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”?

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

4. Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers

5. 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” ( )
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)

6. Diffusion of Innovations - Rogers

7. 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”

8. 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 (

9. Diffusion of Technology - Cowan
Cowan, p270

10. - 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)

11. 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

12. 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

13. (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)

14. 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)

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