Diffusion of Innovations [antikvár]

Preface The first edition of this book , Diffusion of Innovations, was published in 1962. At the time, there were 405 publications about this topic available. The second edition and revision. Communication of Innovations: A Cross-Cultural Approach (co-authored with F. Floyd Shoemaker), was published in 1971, nine years later. By then the number of diffusion publications had almost quadrupled to about 1,500, of which approximately 1,200 were empirical research reports, and the other 300 were bibliographies, syntheses, theoretical writings, and other types of nonempirical publications. At present, 12 years later, the total number of diffusion publications has more than doubled again, to 3,085. And the number of empirical diffusion research reports has increased from 1,500 to 2,297.1 think there is almost no other field of behavior science research that represents more effort by more scholars in more nations. Because of this vast increase in the foundation of diffusion research on which the present book is based, it is both (1) a revision of the theoretical framework, and the research evidence supporting this model of diffusion, and (2) a new intellectual venture, in the sense that new concepts and new theoretical viewpoints are introduced. I estimate that this book represents about equally (1) a continuity with my two previous books on diffusion, and (2) differences and improvements in the basic framework. So the reader can regard the present book as the third volume in a three-volume set on the diffusion of innovations. The stream of diffusion scholarship over the past forty years or so represents both similarities and differences, continuities and discontinuities, and so must my three books, each published approximately a decade apart. By no means, however, do I seek only to synthesize the important findings from past research; I also strive herein to criticize this work (including my own), and to lay out directions for the future that are different from the recent past. I have titled the present book Diffusion of Innovations to identify it with the forty-year sequential tradition of diffusion studies marked by my 1962 book of the same title. In any event, most people refer to