Comments on: Adopting Innovations

By: faraz

faraz — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 06:50:14 +0000

there is still a cause and effect relationship involved in the acceptance of innovation amongst societies, the diffusion of innovation follows the traditional curve of earyly adapters, early majority and laggords. anything that is supposed to be a latent demand of people, comes out as an innovation, and is adopted at some point, but the real thing for innovators who come up with any product is to look at the end game for innovations, if they see that there is need that would be present in future, go for it, how to bring that innovation to market and to make it acceptable, they could produce products as compliment for power Buyers, like ADOBE knew that if google let adobe crawl in searches, it would itself enhance its image as a comrehensive search engine.

By: Atanu Dey on India’s Development » Adopting Innovation (from the archives)

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 10:37:54 +0000

[...] stuff that I had written earlier and I thought I would refer to them here, for the record. Adopting Innovations: People, societies, economies which can successfully adopt innovat [...]

By: Lounger

Lounger — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Amazing post. Agree with you totally. The place I live currently â€“ Singapore – is extremely good at copying innovations and localizing them. Every single public infrastructure developed here has been implemented before in the West or the East. The differentiator is that Singapore implements these infrastructures with precision (Mass Rail Transit, Electronic Road Pricing, Automated parking lots et al) and then successfully trains citizens to effectively make use of these infrastructures.

By: Arun Varadarajan

Arun Varadarajan — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I would say a major factor in the adoption of suct innovations depends on a flagbearer for the same. Someone must be ready to champion the idea and atleast ensure its adoption in his/her sphere of influence.
This is also a major reason why many innovations fail to meet the eye and fail to make it beyond the drawing board.
But what would the flagbearer be classified as …. a microeconomic factor or macroeconomic factor??
beyond just an economic view there is also a hard look to be taken on society that is to be affected by the change. The very fabric of the society determines the aceptance or rejecting a very good idea.
Also the cost of existing services and the cost of bringing the new innovation forth… even though it might be less , also the cost of change which people might associate with the adoption of the innovation. ( Economics is definitely there) as said before , a very very interesting subject but I do not know how to take this forward….
Arun Varadarajan
( These rantings….??? leave me confused and start within me a thought process that seems to contradict what I know and my existing beliefs…)

By: yakshi

yakshi — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Invention doesn’t need genius, and adoption is not that easy:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0423_030423_crowtools.html

By: K. Ramesh Babu

K. Ramesh Babu — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Atanu is right on the mark with the concepts of micro-agent and macro-agents. What any country needs is a whole bunch of macro-agents to champion the use of many of the various types of “wheel-barrows” that the world has produced so far. The macro-agents have to be particularly sensitive to the short-term nature of some of the technologies.
Good article, Atanu.

By: MS

MS — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I am aware ‘wheel barrows’ is just being used as a symbolic reference here. However, I have the following observations about why wheel-barrows cannot be used in India.

1) If you closely observe the construction site area, you will find that the stone or brick loads are carried UP stairs to the first floor or second floor, where they are not too helpful. They are not helpful if the path is sandy or very uneven.

2) As regards Railway coolies, for one most stations have stairs you have to climb to cross platforms, quite unlike the western countries. Check out Bangalore station or Coimbatore station, you will see what I mean.

3) When there are wheel barrows, I would not need a person to help me with the luggage in case the railway platform is even and smooth (with out stair cases) right until the Taxi stand. The government tried to provide these much like a western airport, but the labor unions intervened to prevent loss of jobs.

What I am saying is that, simplification is fine with thinking up theories, but the matters are more complex than that.