The word Diffusion from
the field of science depicts a process in which there is a movement of a
substance from one area of high concentration of that substance to an area of
lower concentration. This purport to explain what is held high in mythology, as
the spread of social institutions (myth and skills) from one society to
another.
Innovation simply
means a creation (a new device or process) resulting from a study and
experimentation. It signifies the act of starting something for the first time,
.i.e introducing something new.
Per the above
definitions, we can deduce therefore that diffusion of innovation simply seek
to explain how innovations are taken up in a population. When we consider
critically, the definitions both diffusion and innovation, we realise it’s
something that we do on a daily basis without realising it. Kwame for example,
creates a look alike of an air plane out of a paper, he gets so excited about
the creation and tells kojo about how interesting it is to play with such an
invention. Kojo tries it and realises how exciting the innovation is and also
introduces Kwasi to the invention in the process. We realise now, on a lighter
note of course, how kwame’s innovation is diffused or spread among his peers
(Kojo and Kwasi), exactly so is the concept of diffusion of innovation.
Indeed, it is believed by
many anthropologists that innovations (inventions and cultural practises) had a
single origin and passed from one society to society, this position is known as
“Diffusionism”. An “extreme” example of the diffusion of innovation theory will
be “pollination” – how pollen grains are diffused from the anther of a flower
to the stigma of another flower. The point I want to make here is that
Innovation can never be diffused without these elements; Relative Advantage,
Compatibility, and Observability.
Like the pollen grains
and Kwame’s invention, there has to be a relative advantage. Why will the
stigma or Kojo adopt the grains and the paper plane respectively? It does not
matter so much if an innovation has a great deal of objective advantage, what
matters is whether individuals perceive the innovation as advantageous. The
greater the perceived advantage of an innovation by people, the more rapid it
is likely to diffuse.
Compatibility has
to do with individuals perceiving an innovation as being consistent with
existing values, past experience and needs of potential adopters without this,
it will be very difficult for the said innovation to gain grounds rapidly in a
social as that which is compatible with social norms. Before the invention of
e-mails and other instant messaging platforms, letters existed and it took days
and in extreme cases, weeks for a letter to be conveyed to the other party.
Therefore when e-mails and related technologies was conceived, it diffused
rapidly across the world because it was built on the foundation of letters
which was an integral part of social norm and also meeting the needs of
potential adopters.
In the example of the
paper plane, Kojo was able to adopt Kwame’s invention because the results of
the innovation was visible to him. The
easier it is for individuals to see the results of an innovation, the more
likely they are to adopt it. Such visibility stimulates peer discussion of a
new idea, just as Kojo also introduced Kwame’s innovation to Kwasi.
Of course, there are
other elements such as; Time, Communication and the Social System (context) as
far as the concept of diffusion of innovation is concerned but I think the
above sums up to what the theory (diffusion of innovation) means.
