Innovation diffusion process

Natural diffusion processes are shaped by marketing, product availability, and price (21-22). Given the infrastructure to make the products available and support their initial application and use, farmers adopt new technology in relatively well-understood ways. The supply of an Innovation, in terms of distribution in areas where farm operators can readily obtain it, is a primary consideration in the adoption process. If not available, an Innovation cannot be adopted. New biotechnology products are likely to be distributed where potential customers are concentrated. In more remote or secondary production regions, lack of product availability may slow the diffusion process. 

The importance of location as a context. Global processes always have then-roots in a spatial context. Internet expansion to worldwide information sources and information distribution channels provide information that is used in locations. These interactions between global information and local conduct are a potential field for geographical research. For example, how does the emergence of new ideas and innovations diffuse through the Internet and what local factors are determining the phase of the adoption process ... 

In model-building and estimation, the within-coimtry diffusion is concerned with the diffusion pattern, the diffusion curve. The cross-border diffusion analysis pursues the question of the international order of adoption of innovations and the time-lag between the first adoption of an innovation by a (lead) country and the following adoption by other (lag) countries. Traditionally, diffusion theory and empirical studies have considered the diffusion process within a country and neglected to explain the national order of adoption of an innovation (Audretsch 1996, p. 110, Dekimpe et al. 1998b, p. 5). Even marketing studies which took the order of countries adopting an innovation into consideration were mainly focussed on the effects of the time lag on the form of the diffusion curve, for instance... 

The model is based on private information dissemination and therefore limited to adoption processes in which private information is the decisive determinant. A second spatial diffusion model is based on the physical infrastructure that is complementary to innovations. Infrastructure and diffusion agencies such as distribution networks are suggested to facilitate the diffusion of innovations (McIntyre 1988). When infrastructure is an important complement it can also be an important factor for international diffusion (section 3.2.2). Formal spatial diffusion models incorporating local externalities have been reviewed in section 2.4.3. As has been noted there already, the problem of a spatial model is its simplification that the diffusion of innovation is modelled only as a spatial process. The assumption of information dissemination seems not to be as relevant for the international diffusion process as for the within-country diffusion because of international differences in national preferences and other environmental contexts. 

The common observation of similarities of cultural features within regions such as house types and music is interpreted as a spatial diffusion of innovation. In a seminal study, Hagerstrand (1973) documented the spatial continuity of acceptance of tuberculosis controls in Swedish farms. The dominant feature of the diffusion process was the dissemination of private information (face-to-face) supported by proximity, the neighbourhood effect (Hagerstrand 1973, p. 165). The centers of the adoption process and exactly why other persons follow a particular center - besides awareness of an innovation - were not explained, however. 

HSgerstrand, Torsten, 1973, Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process, Chicago, London University of Chicago Press. 

Foller PC (1993) Applications of gas diffusion electrodes in prospective electrolytic processes, Electrochem Processing, Innovations and Progress, April 21-23, Glasgow... 

The translation step involves the development of products and processes, whilst commercialisation involves the implementation of an innovation in a form acceptable to the identified market and then its diffusion to other areas. These aspects are covered in much greater detail in Section D. 

The development of the concepts and the calibration of these models require systematic use of fully computational models with long runs on big computing systems, and laboratory and field experiments. It is noted that FCM s are being speeded up by innovative approximations, in particular by modelling the effect of buildings in terms of a force (or source) so that the representation of their shape is not exact and by ignoring Reynolds stresses in the dynamical equations which are solved inexactly by allowing numerical diffusion (caused by approximate discretisation of the equations) to simulate the physical process of turbulent diffusion. 

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