INNOVATION

APPLIED CREATIVITY

Diffusion
Laura Forlano, Ph.D.
forlanol@newschool.edu
http://lauraforlano.org

November 2, 2009

Design and Management

Parsons The New School
1
NY, New York
 PLEASE SIT
IN THE
FRONT HALF
OF THE AUDITORIUM

2
 Service Design Assignment
• Sharing strategies for making easy,
short video clips/slideshows

3
 Project Grading Criteria
• 25% each
• Poor = 15pts, Average = 20pts,
Excellent = 25pts
• Creativity of Idea
• Understanding
• Presentation
• Process
4
 Innovation (Hall)
• Invention (a new idea)
• Commercialization/innovation (applying
the knowledge of the invention to
practice)
• Diffusion (introduction of new products,
processes and practices)

5
 What is Diffusion? (Rogers)
• Process in which an innovation is
communicated through certain channels
over time among the members of a
social system
• Type of communication where the
messages are about a new idea
• Kind of social change that alters the
structure and function of social system

6
 Four Main Elements
• Innovation
• Communicated through certain
channels
• Over Time
• Among Members of a Social System

7
 Innovation
• Idea, practice or object that is perceived as
new
• Innovation-decision process is an activity in
which an individual is motivated to reduce
uncertainty about the advantages and
disadvantages of the innovation
• Attributes of innovations (relative advantage,
compatibility, complexity, trialability,
observability)
• Adoption of innovations with less complexity
8
9
10
11
 Communication Channels
• Means by which messages get from one
individual to another
– Mass media (radio, TV, newspapers), early on
– Interpersonal channels (face-to-face), later on
– Interactive communication (Internet)
• Homophily (similarity) vs. Heterophily
(difference)
– Heterophilous networks are important for the
diffusion of innovations

12
 “Six Degrees of Separation”
• 1967 experiment by sociologist Stanley
Milgram
• Letters given to 160 people in Nebraska to be
sent to colleagues with the goal of reaching a
stockbroker in Boston
• It famously took roughly six links to deliver each
letter
• 3 of the stockbroker’s friends provided the final
link for half the letters that arrived successfully

13
 Time
• Innovation-decision process
(adoption/rejection)
• Innovativeness (earliness/lateness)
• Rate of adoption

14
15
 Innovation-Decision Process
• Knowledge
• Persuasion
• Decision
• Implementation
• Confirmation

16
17
 Social Structure
• Patterned arrangements of the units in
a social system
• Information that decreases uncertainty
• Facilitates or impedes the diffusion of
innovations
• Opinion leaders and change agents

18
 Consequences
• Desirable vs. undesirable
• Direct vs. indirect
• Anticipated vs. unanticipated

19
 Qwerty Keyboard
• Invented in 1873 by Christopher Latham
Sholes
• Intentionally inefficient, awkward and time-
consuming
• Design to slow down typists so that
typewriters would not get stuck
• Dvorak keyboard (1932) has failed to catch
on despite its obvious advantages

20
 The Tipping Point
• Place after which it becomes difficult to stop a
change from spreading (Gladwell)
• 1983 cell phones were sold to executives for
$3000 cost
• 1990s cell phones became smaller and the
cost dropped
• 1998 cell phones seemed nearly ubiquitous

21
22
 Gladwell vs. Watts
• Influentials Theory (Gladwell) =
targeting influentials, tastemakers, early
adoptors, hipsters for viral marketing
campaigns i.e. Hush Puppies story
• The Accidental Influential (Watts) =
large experiments that disprove
Influentials Theory and illustrate that
anyone can become an influential
23
 Information Cascade
• Economics
• Dynamic, driven by success of product
• Social chain reaction, people buy a product
because others are buying it
• Structure of social network important in which
products catch on

Source: “The Science Behind Six Degrees.” Harvard Business Review, February 2003.

24
 VHS vs. Beta (Hall)
• Technological standards and compatibility
– Increasing successful communication between two products
– Lower barrier to learning to use the product
– Increases the size of the market and, potentially, lowers the
cost
• Network externalities
– Benefits that consumers and firms get from adopting a
technology that already has many users
– Direct benefit: communicate with other users
– Indirect benefit: survival of the standard
• VHS could record longer media

25
 Diffusion of Authorship
• Books: 50 in 1400 to a million in 2000
(600 years)
• Blogging: 60 to a million in 5 years
• Facebook: 50,000 to 75 million in 4
years
• Twitter: 10,000 to a million in 3 years

Source: Pelli, Denis G. and Charles Bigelow. (October 20, 2009). “A Writing
Revolution,” SEED Magazine, New York, NY.

26
27
 In-Class Exercise
• Choose an idea, practice or object that you
have adopted or rejected i.e. technology,
fashion style, food, sport
• How did you learn about it?
• Who else in your social network adopted it?
• Why did you adopt or reject it?
• Draw a map of your social network indicating
the diffusion of the innovation and the
relevant communication channels
28
29
 Discussion
• Share examples of the idea, practice or
object that you have adopted or
rejected
• Describe the map of your social network
and the relevant communication
channels

30