Diffusion of Innovation - Science topic

Predominant pro-environmental and pro-climate economic ventures in green entrepreneurship include renewable energy projects (such as solar or wind farms), sustainable agriculture initiatives, eco-friendly product manufacturing, green building construction, and carbon offsetting services.

The local government units in my country play a vital role in promoting entrepreneurship particularly livelihood to the marginalized sectors of the community. In the partnership and linkages with different agencies like academe and industry, they were a great alliance in terms of uplifting the lives of the local people. While the academe provides technical expertise such as business planning, product development, mentoring and coaching for entrepreneurial activities, they likewise provide support like allocation of funds and resources to continue or sustain these programs, projects and activities.

I also think that.

Dear Dr Dariusz Prokopowicz . The topics including: carbon capture and storage systems, more efficient irrigation methods, essential medicines, household water purification devices, and manufacturing processes that minimize waste and pollution.

Industry 4.0 as component of the current context of the business:

"Impact of Industry 4.0 on Business Management Style".

With the appearance of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus called Omicron at the end of November 2021, a key question has arisen: Can a new, mutant coronavirus be completely resistant to the vaccines used so far? Research is ongoing. The answer to this question will soon be known. When considering various scenarios for the future development of the situation, a negative scenario cannot be ruled out. And what if the new variant of the coronavirus can be completely resistant to the vaccines used so far. Can lockdowns be introduced on companies and enterprises operating in specific industries and sectors of the economy as part of the application of systemic anti-pandemic security instruments? And if so, to what extent will anti-crisis, interventionist anti-crisis measures be applied in order to counteract another wave of economic downturn? What instruments of entrepreneurship activation can be used? What do you think about it?

I invite everyone to the discussion,

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Dariusz

Dear Roberto - Minadeo,

Yes. I, too, believe, like you, that academic business incubators are an important source of social and business innovation and entrepreneurship.

Thank you, Regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Dear Phil Barbonis,

I'm in a hurry to answer. Well, the above-mentioned chambers of commerce are created by entrepreneurs running companies and enterprises operating within specific industries and sectors of the economy. In chambers of commerce, entrepreneurs are associated in order to jointly work out solutions to specific economic problems, develop new solutions and innovations, develop ways and methods of more effective implementation of innovations and ways of solving economic problems, and then submit these proposals to parliamentary circles, parliamentary teams of politicians and experts lobbying specific solutions. This is how a large part of the national and regional chambers of commerce in the country in which I operate operate. In individual countries, there are different chambers of commerce, they have different statutory goals, and have different functions and organizational culture. Maybe this results in a different interpretation of the role and importance of chambers of commerce in my and your statements.

Best wishes,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Dear Senapathy Marisennayya,

Yes, that's right. You mentioned important determinants of activating entrepreneurship. Different countries have slightly different conditions in this matter.

Thank you very much,

Best regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

I think there are two key articles to analyze and identify the best Chinese public companies. I share them with you. Kind regards.

The development of ICT, Internet and Industry 4.0 information technologies as well as telecommunications technologies, the Internet of Things, devices such as smartphones, etc. cause that new market niches are constantly being created for specific, new information services available to citizens on smartphones.

Regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

In recent years, building intelligent IT systems managing complex production, logistics, smart city processes, etc. involves the implementation of artificial intelligence technology, learning machines and other Industry 4.0 technologies. Recently, the process of improving the construction and management of digital twin systems has also become another area in which smart technologies can be used.

I invite you to the discussion,

Thank you very much,

Best wishes,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

The first author to work on the TOE model is Roger (1995)

Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of Innovations. New York: The Free Press.

Good evening. Thank you for the interesting question. We conduct research on the morphofunctional indicators of children and adults and the factors that affect them (for example, unfavorable environmental conditions, polyutants). Unfortunately, our research stopped during the pandemic. Because the object that we study is children and adults. Because of the pandemic, teaching has changed a lot (online lectures and video conferences).

In 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus pandemic accelerated the processes of digitization and internetization of remote communication processes, economic and other processes. This increase was mainly due to the implementation of ICT and Industry 4.0 information technologies, including Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things technology, cloud computing, learning machines, etc. to economic processes. Thanks to the growing financial outlays for the development of the aforementioned ICT and Industry 4.0 information technologies and their implementation into economic processes, new business, technological, logistic innovations, etc. are emerging. For example, many companies are currently investing in the development of computerized platforms in order to generate the so-called digital twins who are digital equivalents of business, logistics, production and other processes taking place in the economic entity that create these innovative solutions. Thanks to this, innovative instruments supporting forecasting analyzes of economic processes are created, and thus additional instruments supporting company management processes.

Best regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

A good and potent business angel.

Interesting question. Drones and self-driving cars have different market targets and challenges. I see drones being adopted in automation of delivery logistics, surveillance, and warfare. So its diffusion is industry driven rather than retail, where its use seem to be most common in recreation and photography. Self-driving vehicles on the other hand need to diffuse through market adoption by overcoming safety concerns.

Try linear and discrete math

Dear José Luis Méndez,

In my opinion, despite the fact that the history of drone development dates back to 1917, it was only at the beginning of the 21st century, i.e. one hundred years later, that the technology and applications of drones developed, which is related to the ongoing technological progress in various supporting technologies in the field of batteries that store electricity, plastics materials, ICT information technologies in remote control applications, etc. Besides, it is only in recent years that the development of drone applications has occurred. In 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus pandemic also caused an increase in the use of drones. Currently (December 2020), in the context of the pandemic, drones are used to transport medicines for sick people, drugs and food to places with poorly developed road communication, blood plasma of people who have recovered from Covid-19 disease, etc. In the future, drones will find many more applications as equipment for courier companies delivering different products to individuals. Moreover, conceptual technological solutions for the construction of flying cars, which are also drones, are currently being created. Transport flying machines are also built, which with their shape and avionics technology were created as a combination of the concept of a helicopter with a drone. This type of progress in the field of avionics would not be possible without, for example, constantly improved and more efficient batteries that store electricity, more and more perfect electric motors and devices that charge said batteries with electricity. Perhaps in the future, as part of the ongoing technological progress, the growing demand for electricity, the growing demand for drones and the growing importance of environmentally friendly energy sources, drones will be produced powered by photovoltaic panels, which will cover the drones.

Best regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Olufemi Samson Adesina

You can find the below-mentioned report on the link shared here with

ADOPTION OF TECHNOLOGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE FARMING SYSTEMS WAGENINGEN WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

Dear Sigit Setiawan I have a review paper on the subject. It might be interesting to you

Regards

Mohamed

Though IP management capability was also shown to have an important influence on a new ICT company’s innovation, the impact of specific actions for IP management varied by the specific type of innovation results.... This study suggests that new ICT companies need to construct technological innovation networks using multiple external sources and enhance their IP management capability in order to increase their technological innovation performance.... The factors influencing technological innovation are elements of open innovation, indicating the open technological innovativeness of the new ICT Industry.... Kim, S. Y., & Kim, E. (2018). How Intellectual Property Management Capability and Network Strategy Affect Open Technological Innovation in the Korean New Information Communications Technology Industry. Sustainability, 10(8), 2600.

Dear Juliana,

Unfortunately, my answer is rather suggestive than a problem-solver one as I am not an expert in the mentioned field. However, seeing empty discussion motivated me to share some basic ideas that came into my mind. If you have such a narrow research interest, expert interviews are really important to implement a method to study certain phenomena. My recommendations are as follows:

Best Regards,

Ibrahim

Kate Abraham

In harmony with Brian Barnard 's and Saeid Nosrati 's answers, the purpose of presenting the theoretical framework is to clearly identify the hypothesis and reflect on the theory after data collection and analysis whether it is confirmed or disconfirmed. In addition, theoretical framework provides and depicts theories that explain why the current research problem exists. However, I think that your research paradigm determines the role of theory in the research. You must consider your world view in the research; epistemology, ontology and axiology.

In conceptual framework section the fundamental concepts that characterize and delineate the study variables is presented to establish an informed understanding of the study field.

I understand that creativity and innovation are learned and fostered. You learn by exercising, since childhood, from school age with creativity, drawing and dreaming to improve our lives and the rest of people. Later, in adolescence, one learns with the multidimensional analysis of the problem or the need, the organized action of the project, the design and the possible technological solutions at a material and productive level. In this regard, we compared a joint publication book, which we have developed some ideas.

Perhaps could be useful to read the following paper: Scientific systems in Latin America: performance, networks, and collaborations with industry https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10961-017-9631-7

In view of the above, it is also important to include in the above discussion also the following issue:

In the coming years, humanity should carry out pro-ecological reforms of the classic energy based on the burning of minerals by converting it into environmentally friendly energy based on renewable energy sources. It should be possible to allocate as much as possible to this environmentally-friendly transformation of the energy industry because what will be realized in this matter over the next dozen or so years depends on the pace of the progressive and accelerating process of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Ecological innovations developed primarily in the field of new technologies of renewable energy sources are helpful in the process of proecological energy transformation.

Thanks to ecological innovations, the scope and possibilities of implementing sustainable ecological development are increasing. In connection with the progressing global warming process, it is necessary to develop eco-innovations in the field of renewable energy development, improvement of sorting techniques, recycling, electromobility, organic farming, plastic reduction from packaging and conversion of plastics to biodegradable materials, etc.

In this way, through the development of ecological innovations and their implementation on an industrial scale, it is possible to implement sustainable pro-ecological economic development in modern economies. This is a key challenge for humanity in the 21st century. It is a challenge to the necessary and possibly quick implementation in the coming years.

Do you agree with my opinion on this matter?

In view of the above, I am asking you the following question:

Please reply

I invite you to the discussion

Thank you very much

Best wishes

Entrepreneurship is one of the key competences, and its' basic definition is ''turns ideas into action''. Each learning outcome/teaching goal that enables students to ''turn ideas into action'' is a part of ent. learning.

Why the gathering? You must have a strong motivation. Since case study is not open to generalisation, the subtlety of your motivation would enrich this platform.

Thank you George S Spais, I would definitely look into them.

Corruption and favouritism make it very difficult for startups and SMEs to access loans in my country. In Nigeria, you have to have a collateral or enough money in your account to get funds from the banks and government investment banks.

Hi! I have extensively addressed the relationship between innovation and economic growth and in specific innovation and productivity in a chapter of my PhD thesis which is publicly available. The endogenous growth theory beside semi-endogenous models have been discussed. Complementary to what Magnus mentioned, try to look up for Romer, Lucas, Aghion and Howitt, Jones, Peretto and finally Griliches. Maybe studying CDM model can help as well. Good luck!

Hi, If you take respondents as CEO or top managers of the SMEs the personal factor of the decision maker influence the choice making in adoption of IFRS for SMEs. As per the question you posed that SEM to use. yes you can. I suggest that use exploratory study design.

I agree with Alistair. You need to modify the topic either to 'suggest 'Exploring the adoption of IFRS for SMES: A case study of ....'. A PhD should bring about a new knowledge or experience that is not obvious from the beginning. Try to read further and find out in clear terms and succinctly what are the issues at hand you are trying to find solutions to.

Dear Dariusz,

iI did a lot of work in quantifying innovation based on remarand up to now I have the impression that this never can be done seriously.

. First of all you need to check th potential od your idea

Yes in Brazil, I've coordinated several programs to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation. In the last 17 years we have carried out several programs to strengthen innovative entrepreneurship, especially in the areas of IT, health, agribusiness. Currently, the region where I worked, Southern Brazil, is recognized as one of the main centers of technology and innovation of the country having an integrated system of innovation, which brings together companies, universities, support entities, financial agents and government.

If innovation is considered a concept, process, practice, and capability—not an event, activity, or even outcome—it will stand to reason that innovation and marketing are (or should be) inseparable. "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." said Peter Drucker. (And yet, surveys of top management often show the priorities to be: finance, sales, production, management, legal, and people, in that order.)

In the private sector, for one, enormous investments are made in new products (but also services, processes, business models, etc.) but there are numerous failures. So, what determines the success of an innovation? With good sense, this query intuits that innovation marketing might be an important explanatory variable; and so, a research question in that field, however formulated, might relate to what specific contribution(s) marketing can make to innovation success. Since such a research question would (in this instance) be addressed in the course of a master's thesis, and it is not likely that a budget would be available, the researcher could identify a company currently working on an innovation, however defined, and offer to help that company conduct a pre-mortem designed to shine light on marketing.

PS: A premortem is the hypothetical opposite of a postmortem: projecting into the future, it investigates what might have gone wrong to generate plausible reasons for failure and embed corrective action before the fact.

The policies applied by each country will depend on many factors or agents: First the industry or private company, almost always represented by corporations that have large capitals in their own country.

Second The government through ministers or ambassadors, who monitor the application of international agreements in favor of the national industry.

The technological factor, that is, the technological limitation, plays a very important role when it is lacking for technological exchanges. The developed countries have a great advantage over others.

Innovation is creating, and countries must focus on differentiating themselves and, at the same time, specializing in a sector in order to be more competitive by hammering out their strengths.....

Hello! You can see my work about innovation in Micro and Small Enterprises. I did a model to analyze Innovation using the Innovation Radar of Sawhney and Wolcott.

CATEGORIZATION MODEL WILL DO.

Here is a quick summary I use in my classes to describe the adopter segments and their characteristics.

Andres

In the Diffusion of Innovation Theory, the main variable for clustering of participants is the time of adoption of innovation.

To do this in your survey, you should have asked participants about the time of adoption. Those who adopted the innovation first (in 2,5% on the left side of the Gaussian distribution), you would put into a cluster of innovators, then next 13,5% of participants you would put into a cluster of early adopters etc. (check the image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Diffusion_of_ideas.svg)

If you haven't asked your participants about the time of adoption of the innovation, you should do that to make the clustering.

Thank you, Prof.  Yes, I like to read the writing paper from your student.  It will help me to enrich my knowledge regarding innovation adoption. Thanks again Prof.  Have a nice Day Prof.

There are many articles that use both including:

Understanding the intention to use mobile shopping applications and its influence on price sensitivity

An assessment of advanced mobile services acceptance: Contributions from TAM and diffusion theory models

and

Adding Innovation Diffusion Theory to the Technology Acceptance Model:

Supporting Employees’ Intentions to use E-Learning Systems

Use these articles to locate others with similar exploration using both TAM and DOI. I think they are going to show similar results but it is doable. 

Yes, but you would have to state your assumptions upfront as it is not clear whether teachers were trained in the innovation and have all the necessary resources to implement this innovation. I did something similar to you in assessing my Research e-Clinics innovation that received a merit award in 2016 for excellence in teaching research methodology. See attached.

Best regards,

Debra

Hi William, 

This is a tricky question as it is not very straightforward to know the perspective of a scholar/paper and its philosophical stand. Having said that, I would recommend looking for the work done by the following scholars as they covered various areas of innovation management:

John Bessant - University of Exeter

Julian Birkinshaw - London Business School

Joe Tidd - University of Sussex

Michael Tushman - Harvard Business School

Charles O'Reilly - Stanford University

Regards, 

Malek 

You can ask the consumers following the innovation community approach.

Hi Azhar!

I was recently working on a paper about why fashion businesses do (or don't) adopt particular eco-innovations, using the theories Everett Rogers puts forward in the work you mentioned. I haven't looked at it in-depth but I wondered whether you could find some specific scales related to the innovation-decision process (rather than the innovation-diffusion process). I'm sure you've already looked at his work a lot but I found this five-stage process, and what encourages/discourages consumers to adopt an innovation through the decision-making process, very useful.

Apologies if that's not adding anything new but hope it's a helpful perspective!

Elly

For more expensive solar technologies, in addition to the Rogers model, I'd suggest also considering Stages of Change / Transtheoretical model. When it is more difficult to make a change, you can use constructs from that theory to measure people's movement towards making and maintaining the change you are promoting.  

Across the course of 15 years in leading product development teams an internal (to my employer) measure seems to have similar traits in the cognitive and psychological area as the paper published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management "Successful innovation using strategies to reduce consumer resistance: An empirical test ".

As I did not publish a paper on the approach and findings I can briefly describe the outcomes here.

Summary.When validating new concepts or innovations with members of the target user audience, the level of perceived usefulness and desirability was inversely proportional to the level of abstraction in which the concept or innovation was described. Concepts or innovations may be rejected by users in the target audience or consumer group if the concept or innovation has lower resolution or fidelity in it's presentation form.

It is thought that the more abstract or new an idea or concept is, the more difficult it is for the target consumer / user group to effectively assess it. It is therefore considered that concept resolution (fidelity) profoundly impacts cognitive and psychological perceptions. 

The following process was repeated in various countries worldwide and the concept or innovation tested were all of the same concept. In other words the concept in A, B, C and D are the same concept only with different levels of resolution.  

A. If the new concept or innovation is described in text only - the level of usefulness was poorly perceived and scored lowest.

B. A text description with a simple 2D drawing of the concept or innovation was perceived as marginally better than the text description alone and scored somewhat higher.

C. Text description with the drawing and a full size 3D non functional mock up of the concept was more clearly understood and the perceived usefulness and desirability score move significantly higher than those assessing these things under A. and B. above.

D. A fully functional prototype that the user could literally operate always achieved the highest score in usefulness and desirability.      

Over time with different developments this process was repeated using the same methodology with almost identical result patterns. The result patterns were similar across tangible items like products and more conceptual ideas like strategies or services.

The take away from these results are as follows:

- Concepts, innovations or ideas can often be killed off too early in the assessment phase, because the fidelity of the concept presented to the user may be too abstract for realistic evaluation. Low resolution - lower consumer comprehension - concept carries a perceived level of risk. 

- The more novel or unconventional that a concept is (e.g. nothing else like it on the market) the higher the resolution is needed for consumers to reasonably evaluate it.

- To remove the cognitive bias from comparative assessments of different concepts, the fidelity of the concepts need to be at the same level. In other words, similar concepts should not be assessed - one as a 3D model and the other as a 3 page text document.

In one study of the exact same concept, 20% of the assessed consumer group felt the text concept was useful and desirable (buying signal) while 95% of the consumer group felt the functional prototype was useful and desirable.   

Had the effort to mature the concept beyond text not been made, the decision to develop the product and go to market would have never been made.

Thanks for your time.

Respectfully

Russ Ward        

Theory of Diffusion of adoption comes in picture if consumers have accepted/bought a product, service or a process. What you are asking about it 'Awareness and perception' something which comes before the purchase.

I guess more clarity in the question would help others to give their views.

You might also find useful  "Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle". If you want have a look at the following link:

Konak, A., Clark, T. K., & Nasereddin, M. (2014). Using Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle to improve student learning in virtual computer laboratories. Computers and Education, 72, 11–22. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.10.013

Can I be blunt? This approach doesn't seem like a suitable Master's thesis idea.

Here's what I would do instead.

Follow the approach that RAND used (see link to free paper below) to estimate diffusion of information technology in healthcare. In the absence of any good data in the industry of focus, they basically looked at similar industries, and merely approximated trends in healthcare. Some triangulation with surveys and literature reviews. Much more juicy and defensible.

So to make up an example, suppose you're looking at the potential diffusion of the use of clusters of semi-autonomous micro-drones ('swarms') in civil defense by government purchasers.

Lord knows who can estimate that. But there are analogies you could drive. The underlying innovation came perhaps from hobbyists and gamers, and spread to more serious uses. Government purchasers adopted similar innovations from hobbyists (e.g. citizens band radios) and from gamers (e.g. capable tablet PCs with video cards) at certain knowable rates. Your purchasers are in an area where for economic, trade and political reasons, general technology diffusion across national borders is x, others countries do it a y, and voila, you can make some sensible predictions. Just making it up, but you see what I mean. If you can run your end-results past an informed group of respondents, so much the better...

There is a lot of work in this area, although much of it is in the form of disparate design case studies rather than focused research programs. Two examples of design cases are: 

Veerasawmy, Rune, and Ole Sejer Iversen. "Bannerbattle: introducing crowd experience to interaction design." Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design. ACM, 2012.

Or.. Particularly..

Woźniak, Paweł, et al. "RUFUS: Remote Supporter Feedback for Long-Distance Runners." Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. ACM, 2015.

Good luck with your thesis!

Dear  Clarke,

M-Pesa dynamics are indeed complicated stuff. I did an academic paper on the role of M-Pesa in financial inclusion and the trend is that the use of M-Pesa is motivated by an unbanked population which wants access to financial services. We may say that the success of Mpesa was driven by need more than structure or zeal! That, perhaps, could explain why other countries have struggled to come up with equivalents. We must also point out that in cases, absence of resistant institutions, especially informal, helps the acquisition of mobile money services. Mobile money in the fashion of Kenya is difficult to emulate as long as people have equally good opinions, besides purely mobile money; such as the credit and debit cards, on;ine banking and such. Even in Kenya, these alternatives are being used by banks to leverage on the consumer shifts from banks that insist on physical banking hall presence.  

I'll try to gather something for you on this issue, subject to finding time...

Thanks and wish you well.

Hello Ms Kuhne,

I chanced to come by, or on to your questions and they  intrigued me. At the outset I must admit that I am not a food scientist;   I am an innovator.  I also happen to be an academic who  has been involved in teaching  innovation and technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, or  courses that were variations on those themes. Thus,  your questions were  a source of puzzlement to me. And my response may well be unusual. Your questions which I quote were:

“a) How should a network be structured in order to facilitate innovation and knowledge exchange of (food) SMEs?

b) Which methods could be applied to enrich our understanding of SMEs' needs for innovation and knowledge exchange? “

The first one seem to implicitly suggest that innovation  ( and perhaps knowledge exchange amongst food SMEs) is not occurring to the extent that you would like. If this is indeed the case, there is a tacit acceptance on your part that networks may well  or could help

The second question seems to suggest that we need methods “to enrich our understanding of SMEs’ needs for innovation and knowledge exchange”. Is that correct? Is that what you  are seeking to achieve?

If innovation is not occurring, this is what I would suggest by way of innovation, again  not through the lens of a food scientist but as an innovator of sorts with a general interest in all things innovative. We know for a  fact that  with the long period of drought in  some parts of Africa, there is food shortage. 1) Why not work on developing crops that  do not need much water?  2) Why not develop crops that can grow quickly when the rains come, albeit over just a few days? 3)  Why not develop methods to conserve water that comes  incessantly and unexpectedly? 4) Why not develop crops that can cope with long periods of drought and still produce a healthy yield?   Those obviously apply to Africa. 

But here are a few more: Why not develop crops that  are pest resistant? Why not develop crops that are not affected by the use of pesticide, and  if  used, do not affect those who consume such food? – I assume that food treated with pesticides may have undesirable effects on humans. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Moving away from Africa to  the rich West, I notice that many food items  being sold in our supermarkets  contain all kinds of preservatives such as, for instance, nitrites and other chemicals , including phosphoric acid, alcohol  supposedly used to preserve them, to enhance taste like MSG,  to raise sweetness levels like additive sugar, aspartame, stevia, and  all those additive substances that run the gamut from A-numbers to Z-numbers  including E-numbers. They may extend shelf-life and endow the food with  all sorts of desirable characteristics. Personally speaking, aspartame and stevia cause a bad taste in my mouth and  even nausea.  Is it not possible to  come up with some innovative processes that do not require the use of such  factory-produced chemicals, or synthetic chemicals to act as shelf-life extenders or as taste enhancers or as appearance modifiers ( colouring agents)  so that  they look fresh, appetizing, etc? 

Again, putting on my technology hat, why not develop some form of technology that shows how much longer the food can be consumed, once the sell-by, eat-by dates have actually been reached.  In that suggestion, I can see that food  suppliers, the last in the supply chain,  may not be happy as it might be inimical to their financial interests. Nonetheless, in that  way, we will be able to reduce food wastage. There are a whole range of social actions, often innovative,  that can reduce food waste, I am certain of that. That said, would supermarkets and their suppliers or all parties in the food supply chain be happy to  help?

Coming to your question b) which I take at face value, I am wondering if SME’s still do not understand the need for innovation.  As for knowledge exchange, a Master’s degree student of mine studied  the effects on innovation of  SME’s participating in EU-funded consortia, and the results were not always beneficial to the SMEs when consortia members also included larger parties. Coming to methods, I am at loss to understand what you are driving at. Perhaps you meant something else but articulated in a  manner that resulted in a misinterpretation, particularly by this present writer.  Do feel free to contact me here  or preferably by email to discuss any statements I have made that do not resonate with you. I am of course willing to help you from a  technologist’s viewpoint, should you so desire. I do know something about networks.

My own experience, finally,  is that knowledge-sharing is unlikely to occur between distant actors in the same company; perhaps in other industries -- I worked in the computer industry - it may happen. But, when I was able to bring them  together by inviting them  them  to come to the place I was located (in The Netherlands), with of course my manager's blessing and approval, there was a free flow of information, and yes, knowledge exchange of a a high quality. And this exchange continued when they went back to the UK, USA, Israel,  Italy, Germany, France, etc, or wherever they came from..

I could go on, but shall  go for that period or full stop right now.

Best wishes.

you can review the following papers related with s curves, the used mathematical models could be usefull

Hi Sekondeko,

Have you considered the TAM (Technology Adoption Model) which has been extended with innovation perception related constructs? See the following article:

Rampersad, G., Plewa, C., & Troshani, I. (2012). Investigating the use of information technology in managing innovation: A case study from a university technology transfer office. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 29(1), 3-21.

Hope it helps.

Cheers,

Giselle

In addition to the above answers I am just adding a few points:-

Innovation often serves as a signal (signalling theory, legitimacy indicator)to larger corporates/venture capitalists. Since smaller firms have a paucity of resources and/or access to capital (since they have less options of showing credit worthiness, as in the case of start-up's. An alternative proposition may be to show 'promise' in the form of innovation (ideas) : as in the case of facebook, apple etcetera). A positive signal might help smaller businesses gain access to capital, access to other firms networks, or support from larger entities.

Innovation may also help get alliance/joint venture opportunities : Sometimes in the case of such JV's when the smaller firm cannot pump equity capital; the larger firm might just buy a proportionate part of the smaller firm. (When some smaller businesses don't want to get acquired or sell their business)

Innovation might help create an initial value for the firm and then, a larger firm may be interested to acquire it (at a premium). This benefits the innovator who uses (his) smaller firm as a conduit or channel to sell his idea/innovation. So the 'business' benefits by an ignition of an idea by the innovator and later gets incubated by the larger firm (if it is capable of absorbing the tacit and explicit technology) {or, it can buy the innovators idea and instate someone competent/original innovator to run the business}

Effectual thinking (choosing path and then the goal emerges)/accidental discovery or innovation (acknowledgement of something useful during ex-post analysis of that unintended event is also a type of innovation. Penicillin was discovered by accident; So if such an accident occurs at a small SME/firm and it is competent to recognize that some 'generated' resource has a potential worth it might help change course.

An innovation can be a static (discovery; innovation in product) goal  or a (continual or continuous) process (Lindbloom (1959) stated that a continuous nibbling is better than a big bite// commitment to innovation might help find new opportunities or improve current business.

These were just some points that came up.. 

Silburn:

You may even find a new model emerging from Ali's suggestion. Here's what is available in ResearchGate:https://www.researchgate.net/publicliterature.PublicLiterature.search.html?type=keyword&search-keyword=diffusion+of+applications+on+smartphones+in+emerging+markets+&search-abstract=&search-journal=&search=Search

I extend best regards for every success in your research.

Debra

Things to be cautious of, and also generally acknowledged in Rogers' most recent book.

Consider that you may be assuming that Office360 is "Better" than anything else available. Neo-Office and similar programs, may be considered more secure than anything offered by Microsoft. Similarly, Google Docs is easy and flexible and well-suited for 99% of wordprocessing tasks.

Innovators are NOT the first 2.5% of adopters, and Early Adopters are NOT the next 13.5%, etc. Those percentages assume a Normal Distribution, which was a very easy simplification for Rogers's PhD in the 1960's. A quick glance at various diffusion curves should persuade anyone that diffusion does not follow a Normal Cumulative Density curve.

Rogers found that personal attributes, especially personality, and the resources to act on one's interest in a potentially risky venture were moderators of the timing of adoption. Categories of adopters is based on the timing of adoption. Timing can be affected by a range of factors - some identifiable and measurable, most unique to the individual. The evidence suggests that Innovators may be different from others with regard to "Innovativeness" and "Risk Aversion" but there are rarely any meaningful differences amongst other adopters. In that regard, often it is better to simply classify adopters into "Innovators" and "The Rest".

With all of that, you may decide that you can get more interesting research by considering more general personality and activity traits such as the four patterns of action (questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking) suggested by

Dyer, Gregersen and Christensen (2009) "The Innovator’s DNA", HBR (December) Online: https://hbr.org/2009/12/the-innovators-dna

I very agree with last opinion. I can add, that in our research driven in last 10 years in Polish Industry System, I see significant meaning this two different tracjectories in well- and low-developed countries. In first group, spatial proximity plays important role for innovation activity. For second group, more important is technological proximity. It seems, that in less-developed countries spatial and technology proximity work opposite way - closest means lack of knowledge. It's much different as in well-developed countries.