Sci&Tech History

How can knowledge spread from one community onto another? How advertisements persuade people to buy their product? Gabrial Tarde(1895), a pioneer in doing innovation research, believed the human tendency to imitate fellow beings was the fundamental law of all social phenomena. By seeing it natural phenomena, diffusion was a net movement from high concentration to an area of lower concentration. In social case, high concentration is the analogy to producer, research and development centre, academic, government, etc. Diffusion studies try to explain how product, knowledge, information, policy can spread, known, and then accepted in a larger area.

Diffusion studies can be separated in two parts, diffusion of innovation and adoption process. Everett Rogers believed that the product characteristics of an innovation influence the acceptance of a product. The more complex a product is, the more resistant the consumer will be. Furthermore, Rogers distinguishes five groups of users: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

One of the first studies using a diffusion approach was picking up by Bryce Ryan and Neal Gross in 1943 which investigated the diffusion of hybrid corn in two Iowa farming communities. Their research which took time nine years, try to explain how hybrid corn was accepted or rejected in a community, and why there is difference between the time acceptance of one person/community among the other. Ryan and Gross believed that social structures and sosio-phychological factors influence the process.

Merton continues the explanation about social structures by comparing local and cosmopolitan innovator. He found five characteristic that influence an acceptance of innovation: roots, relational, civic spirit, reading habits, and sociodemographics. Using a network approach, relation between acceptance and the characteristics above can be explained by seeing it connectivity. If someone has a high degree of connectivity, than s/he has a bigger chance to be a pioneer.

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