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Table of contents
Introduction
It has been noted that human activity tends to spread outwards from core points to peripheries in the same manner as ripples spread across a pond from a dropped stone. Spatially, many activities and phenomena do the same, i.e., move outwards from core to peripheries, such as culture, fashion, information, ideas, economic development, etc. When gold was discovered in California, relatively few people knew about it in the first week or two because there were not many people around to pass the message on.
As the word reached San Francisco and finally found its way to the Eastern States more and more carriers and recipients became available. The news diffused to every corner of the world and the gold rush was on. Similarly cultures also spread from the area of their origin. Buddhism spread from Rajgir and Gaya, Jainism from Pawapuri, Islam and Christianity from Jerusalem. Spatially, economic growth does the same diffusing over an area, like the spread of a disease from a given growth point.
In effect, advanced economic activity would eventually spread throughout a given country. This process is called diffusion and when any new ideas, new technologies are involved it is called diffusion of innovation.
Definition and Meaning of Diffusion
Diffusion is the process of spread of movement of a phenomenon over space and through time. Innovation is the successful introduction of ideas or artifacts, perceived as new into a given social economic system. It may be based on an idea or prototype that is invented, borrowed or imitated.
Innovation implies changes to a culture that result from ideas created within the social group itself and adopted by the culture. The novelty may be an invented improvement in material technology, like the bow and arrow or the jet engine. It may involve the development of nonmaterial forms of social structure and interaction: for example, feudalism or Christianity.
Primitive and traditional societies are characteristically not innovative. Those societies which are at equilibrium with their environment and with no unmet needs, change has no adaptive value and no reason to occur. In most modern societies innovative change has become common, expected and inevitable.
Innovation is different from invention. Invention is the creative act or process. It involves new ideas, new producers, new types of organization, new products, and new technologies; it includes basic application of new knowledge and new components as in the invention of steam engine, computer or x-ray and also elaborations and improvements in later models based on additional experimentation and experience. Innovation is the acceptance, adoption and application of inventions in areas other than centers of invention after the invention has occurred.
The time element involved is also important because the most distant areas innovate last and least. Innovation, thus, involves a time space sequence, acceptance over time of some specific ideas or practice by individuals, groups or other adopting units that are linked to specific channels of communication, to a specific societal structure and to a given system of value or culture.
Thus, diffusion of innovation is the process by which an innovation is adopted by those who did not adopt it earlier. Diffusion of innovation is, by definition, a function of communication, and is an outcome of usability, popularity, ease of handling, source and force of information from where the same is received, level of income and cultural traits of the people who inhabit the area.
Types of diffusion
Diffusion processes have been distinguished on the basis of either the character of dispersal, i.e., expansion, or relocation and the structural character, i.e., contagious or hierarchical.
Expansion diffusion
Expansion diffusion is a process of transmission through a population from one location to neighboring location or decision points. In this expansion, the phenomenon being diffused remains and is often intensified, in the originating location, with new member being added to the population in such a manner that the spatial pattern of population as a whole is altered.
Islam, for example, expanded from its Arabian peninsula origin across most of Asia and North America. At the same time, it strengthened its hold over the Near Eastern birthplace by displacing Pagan, Christian and Jewish populations.
Expansion diffusion can be subdivided into contagious diffusion and hierarchical diffusion.
Contagious diffusion
When expansion diffusion affects nearly uniformly all individuals and areas outward from the source region, it is termed contagious diffusion. Contagious diffusion involves transmission processes that depend upon direct contact. The spread takes place in a centrifugal manner from the source locations outwards and is dependent upon the proximity and interaction between actual adopters and potential adopters.
In expansion diffusion, the teller and the adopters must be in direct contact and often the likelihood of contact depends on how close together they live or work or generally carry on their life. The closer their lifespaces, the more likely they will be to make contact and be subjected to contagious diffusion in the spread of the idea.
To buy a new variety of seed, for example, a teller (someone who has used the seed and seen its effect) is more likely to show the impact of the seed on the farm if they occupy the adjacent farmland than if they live in different villages. Distance between the teller and the receiver, i.e, space is an important factor in contagious diffusion. But it need not necessarily be the only factor-teller and receiver may be relatives or may work together.
Generally, however, in expansion diffusion the strength of the link between teller and receiver is inversely related to the length of the link. The chance of a teller meeting a receiver who lives 50 km away is much less than meeting one who lives 5 km away. Space or distance effectively acts as a barrier to diffusion.
Hierarchical or Cascade diffusion
In some instances, however, geographic distance is less important in the transfer of ideas than is communication between major centers or important people. For example, news of new clothing styles quickly spreads internationally between major cities and only later filters down irregularly to smaller towns and rural areas. The process of transferring ideas first between larger places or prominent people and only later to smaller or less important points or people is known as hierarchical diffusion.
Thus, hierarchical or cascade diffusion describes a process that transmits a phenomenon through a system of ordered centers, locations or decision points, either upward or downward in a hierarchy.
In this type, large places or important people tend to get the information first and after that it diffuses horizontally between centers of the same level or persons of the same level and trickles vertically downwards to smaller places. Thus, innovations are first seen in the major cities, later in small towns and finally in rural areas. This pattern applies to most innovations whether it is the use of credit cards, wearing of miniskirts or any popular music.
Fashions provide a good example of this type of diffusion. Frequently originating in New York, Paris, London, Rome or Milan, new fashions are first taken up in the large regional centers of Europe and North America. Subsequently, they arrive in the shops of less important cities and finally in small town shops.
However, in this strong hierarchical diffusion, a lesser distant source is likely to have the fashions sooner than small towns, far away. In hierarchical diffusion of this type, direct contact may not be necessary between teller and receiver. The mass media like newspapers and television may be important carriers of information. The purpose of mass media is to effectively reduce the constraints and barriers imposed by the distance between teller and receiver.
Relocation diffusion
In relocation diffusion, it is the movement of people itself that is responsible for the movement of ideas or information. The phenomena being diffused evacuate the old locations as it moves to new locations. Its movement pattern comprises successive relocations that may by-pass certain potential locations. The spread of religions by settlers or conquerors is a clear example of relocation diffusion, as was the diffusion of agriculture to Europe from the Middle East.
Christian Europeans brought their faiths to areas of colonization or economic penetration, throughout the world. At the world scale, massive and pervasive relocation diffusion resulted from the European colonization and economic penetration that began in the 16th century. More localized relocation diffusion continues today as Asian refugees or foreign guest workers’ bring their cultural traits to their new areas of settlement in Europe or North America.
The diffusion of a language may be the result of the relocation of speakers of the language as much as of the teaching of the language to new speakers. In the settlement of a newly discovered territory, settlement diffusion occurs and homes are relocated to new places in the land to be settled. The movement of population in such a case is relocation diffusion as their numbers do not increase but their location changes.
Innovations in the technological or ideological subsystems may be relatively readily diffused to and accepted by cultures, which have basic similarities and compatibility. For example, Continental Europe and North America could easily and quickly adopt the innovations of the Industrial Revolution diffused from England with which they shared a common economic and technological background.
Industrialization was not quickly accepted in Asian and African societies of totally different cultural conditioning. On the ideological level, too, successful diffusion depends on acceptability of innovations. The attempt of the Shah of Iran to industrialize traditional Islamic Iran in late 70’s evoked a traditional backlash and revolution that deposed the Shah and reestablished clerical control of the State.
