Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Its Application

Introduction

Innovations help people to achieve better results in the areas of their personal and professional interests. Modern cars and mobile services are created to meet the increasing demands of the population concerning innovative decisions and their application to the practical area of use. The innovation-decision process as well as the rate of innovation adoption and adopter categories was clearly explained by Everett M. Rogers while the current implementation of these concepts is more practice-related rather than theoretical.

Mobile services

Mobile services play a crucial role in the life of contemporary society members. The adoption of mobile services in different countries of the world can be traced to the innovation adoption analysis suggested by Rogers. Such countries as Finland, Germany, and Greece were examined by Lauri Frank¹ in terms of the adoption of mobile services as the reflection of innovative decisions. The author of this online article identifies the categories of adopters applied to these three countries grouped “by their diffusion curve parameters.”² In other words, the countries were investigated in terms of the attitude of people towards innovation and rates of use of various devices and services such as mobile services, in this case.

Education

Education is another area of innovation application that should be analyzed. As such, faculty members of the College of Education of Ohio University were interviewed and observed by Catherine Wairimu Mwaura who applied Everett M. Rogers’s theory to the investigation.³ As for the reasons for adopting or not the web-based instruction, these included advantages to disadvantages ratio, time and effort spent on application, and complexity of instruction as well as training for using such a technology.⁴ As a result, web-based instruction was considered an innovation and not every educator/administrator is ready to adopt it.

Distance learning

Distance learning from the perspective of web-based instruction is innovative though it is effective in terms of time and resource efficiency. Faculty concerns about distance learning were questioned by Jennifer McLean about the adoption of various innovative methods and techniques of distance learning in the online format⁵ The adopters were categorized from Rogers’s perspective in the framework of diffusion of innovations and factors that hamper in the adoption of innovations by the majority. The integration of theories was introduced in the article as a way of promoting innovation adoption⁶

Integrated Pest Management

Integrated Pest Management was investigated by Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo, E. Douglas Beach, and Wen-yuan Huang in terms of various techniques applied in farming to meet the health requirements for products produced⁷ As adoption of such innovation was a matter of consumers’ health and natural environment, many farmers took those changes for granted whereas others appeared not to be ready for adoption of innovation.

Conclusion

Finally, electronic commerce was analyzed as an innovative method applied to automobile dealerships in the framework of Rogers’s innovation diffusion. As such, Juhani Iivari and Marius Janson investigated the factors that influence decision-making in the domain of automobile dealerships about whether those factors are considered to be advantages or disadvantages in applying the innovation⁸ The factors concerned the following issues: “history and implementation of eCommerce in the respective organizations, strategies of eCommerce development, expectations concerning its impact, perceived changes in business, business models and organization, perceived success and critical success factors of eCommerce, and plans of its development.”⁹

All the sources are related to the diffusion of innovations because they apply theory to practical areas.

Bibliography

Fernandez-Cornejo, Jorge, E. Douglas Beach, and Wen-Yuan Huang, “The Adoption of IPM Techniques by Vegetable Growers in Florida, Michigan and Texas.” Journal of Agriculture and Applied Economics 26, no. 1 (1994): 158-172.

Frank, Lauri. “Adoption of Mobile Services in Finland, Germany and Greece.” Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland, 2001.

Iivari, Juhani, and Marius Janson. “Analysis of Electronic Commerce Adopter Categories in Retailing: The Case of Automobile Dealerships.” Web.

McLean, Jennifer. “Addressing Faculty Concerns About Distance Learning.” Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration VIII, no. IV (2005).

Mwaura, Catherine Wairimu. “An Investigation of the Innovation-Decision Process of Faculty Members with Respect to Web-Based Instruction.” Doctoral dissertation, College of Education of Ohio University, 2003.

Footnotes

1. Lauri Frank, “Adoption of Mobile Services in Finland, Germany, and Greece” (online article, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland, 2001).
2. Ibid., 1.
3. Catherine Wairimu Mwaura, “An Investigation of the Innovation-Decision Process of Faculty Members concerning Web-Based Instruction” (doctoral dissertation, College of Education of Ohio University, 2003).
4. Ibid., 36-42.
5. Jennifer McLean, “Addressing Faculty Concerns About Distance Learning,” Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration VIII, no. IV (2005): 1.
6. Ibid., 5-9.
7. Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo, E. Douglas Beach, and Wen-yuan Huang, “The Adoption of IPM Techniques by Vegetable Growers in Florida, Michigan, and Texas,” Journal of Agriculture and Applied Economics 26, no. 1 (1994): 158.
8. Juhani Iivari, and Marius Janson, “Analysis of Electronic Commerce Adopter Categories in Retailing: The Case of Automobile Dealerships.” Web.
9. Ibid., 4.