Introduction to innovation diffusion

In Australia only 2%¹ of companies actively engage in the development of new and novel innovations. The other 98% are adopters of existing innovations. This adoption of innovation is called innovation diffusion. This diffusion can involve dated technology. Let me give you an example:

My wife runs her one person psychology practice. Like many others, over the years she has evolved her business scheduling, billing and admin so that it can all be run from her mobile. However she was using a generic accounting package. Her accounting consumed about 8 hours in a week.

Several years ago we investigated alternatives to accounting packages and found that online medical practice platforms were a good fit for her business. We chose one and scheduled a trial on her holidays. However it was a radical change in process and overwhelming at that time. 6 months later we again attempted the migration with success.

It did not take long for my wife to become proficient with the new package. She found that her weekly accounting time reduced to 2½ hours a week. Approximately a 12% increase in her productivity. Considering the average productivity increase in Australia was about 0.5% in the last 5 years², my wife contributed more than her share in that year.

Research into innovation diffusion has been carried out since the late 19th century³, In 1962, Everett Rogers created a systematic theory covering innovation diffusion. (It is interesting seeing how our experience of adopting a new accounting system fits into this system and why we did not do it earlier.) There have been approximately 4000 articles published on this subject however critics complain that research in this field is stagnant. They complain that these later studies and articles explore variations in the theory but not in a cohesive way³.

I find this stagnation surprising as I assume there are greater opportunities for productivity improvements in an economy through innovation diffusion than with the development of new innovation. Will let you know if I find any study covering this in future posts.

https://prodxchg.com - An exchange combining share registry and trading and innovation diffusion for MSMEs.