Monday, June 08, 2009

The Biz School Chronicles :: Diffusion of innovations

From the marketing lectures ...

Diffusion of innovations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diffusion of Innovations is a theory of how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. The concept has been first studied by the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde (1890) and by German and Austrian anthropologists as Friedrich Ratzel or Leo Frobenius [1]. Its basic ‚epidemiological‘ or ‚internal-influence‘ form was described by H. Earl Pemberton[2], who provided examples of institutional diffusions as postage stamps or compulsary school laws. The publication of a study of Ryan and Gross on the diffusion of hybrid corn in Iowa[3] was the first sustainably visible contribution in a broader interest in innovations which was especially popularized by the textbook of Everett Rogers (1962), Diffusion of Innovations. He defines diffusion as "the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system."[1]