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The productivity and quality of working life of operations within a firm with multiple operating units can be improved by the diffusion of incremental improvements from one unit to another. The opportunities and problems experienced by one large multi‐unit firm in diffusing employee innovations between units are examined. It was found that incremental or Minor Technical Improvements (MTIs) do diffuse between units. Improved communication and increased under standing of the innovation process by management may increase the amount of MTI diffusion. The costs and benefits of MTI type innovation and diffusion are explored. Opportunities for more research into the diffusion of MTIs in other multi‐unit firms are discussed.

Discusses the meanings of innovation and innovation diffusion, how innovations are affecting US corporations, and the developments that are emerging to improve innovation diffusion. Examines the implications of innovation for corporate culture and developments in innovation diffusion and organizational structure, such as international and national alliances. Concludes that managers must be aware of the importance of innovation diffusion, and successfully create cultures and alliances which facilitate the adoption of innovation.

Drawing upon Abrahamson's (1991) typology of innovation diffusion, this study aims to investigate the factors underpinning diffusion of sustainability key performance indicators (SKPIs) in a developing country.

A qualitative study was conducted in Sri Lanka involving semi-structured interviews with managers, as users of SKPIs (demand-side), and both consultants and academics, as agents in diffusion process (supply-side).

Diffusion of SKPIs was found to be driven by efficient-choice considerations, with fashion motives intertwined with these. The diffusion was influenced by developing country context issues relating to market competition, education, government and culture. It was somewhat surprising that market forces played a key role to the extent they did. Minimal stakeholder pressure was found to undermine the diffusion process, contrasting with developed countries in which key stakeholders act as catalysts. The developing country context appears to slow down the pace, rather than alter the pattern, of diffusion of SKPIs.

This study is limited by its focus on SKPI adopters, which does not permit to draw insights regarding motivations of non-adopters.

This study draws upon Abrahamson's typology to explore the diffusion of SKPIs in the poorly understood developing country context. The findings provide insights into driving forces behind diffusion of SKPIs, suggesting the developing country context creates “stickiness” that influences pace rather than the pattern of diffusion of SKPIs.

The objective of this study is to advance the understanding of the connection between cultural distance and the cross-border diffusion of innovations by conducting a systematic review and analysis of previous literature.

This study involved a literature review. A total of 35 articles published in ABS journals were identified from key management, international business and marketing journals. The articles were analyzed by the methodologies and findings presented.

The literature review shows that the adoption and diffusion of innovation and new products are bound to be deeply influenced by cultural distance. Specifically, national cultures influence the willingness of consumers to buy new products at both the individual and organizational levels; organizational culture plays a key role in the process of launching new products and diffusing innovations to the market. However, existing studies and their findings are fragmented and inconsistent. Controversial views remain regarding the impact of national cultural dimensions on the diffusion of innovation at the individual and organizational levels.

This is the first systematic review of the literature specifically focusing on the impact of cultural distance on the cross-border diffusion of innovation. In identifying the research gaps and limitations of extant studies, the authors point to avenues for future research to develop a more integrated research agenda for marketing, management and international business research.

El objetivo de este estudio es avanzar en la compresión de la conexión que existe entre la distancia cultual y la difusión transfronteriza de innovaciones, mediante la realización de una revisión sistemática y un análisis de la literatura previa.

Este estudio incluyó una revisión de la literatura. Y se identificaron un total de 35 artículos en las revistas, relacionados con clave de gestión, negocios internacionales y marketing, publicados en revistas de ABS. Los artículos fueron analizados por las metodologías y hallazgos presentados.

La revisión de la literatura muestra que la adopción y la difusión de la innovación y los nuevos productos, están fuertemente influenciados por la distancia cultural. Específicamente, las culturas nacionales influyen en la disposición de los consumidores a comprar nuevos productos, tanto a nivel individual como a nivel organizacional; la cultura organizacional desempeña un papel clave en el proceso de lanzamiento de nuevos productos y difusión de innovaciones en el mercado. Sin embargo, los estudios existentes y sus hallazgos son fragmentados e inconsistentes. Sigue dándose opiniones controvertidas sobre el impacto de las dimensiones culturales nacionales en la difusión de la innovación a nivel individual y organizacional.

Esta es la primera revisión sistemática de la literatura, que se centra específicamente en el impacto de la distancia cultural en la difusión transfronteriza de la innovación. Al identificar las brechas de la investigación y las limitaciones de los estudios existentes, señalamos vías para futuras investigaciones, con el fin de desarrollar una agenda de investigación más integrada para el estudio de marketing, administración y negocios internacionales.

In heterogeneously segmented markets, collaborating with product users in product innovation is important for business success. End user innovators and embedded user innovators differ in terms of their prior embeddedness in the target industry. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, the authors empirically compare these two types of user innovators in terms of their diffusion channel selection. Second, the authors analyze how the technological advances of their innovations affect this difference.

Using an online questionnaire survey, this study collected a sample of 237 user-generated innovations in Japan and analyzed several hypotheses using quantitative statistical approaches.

The analysis shows that embedded user innovators are more likely than end user innovators to transfer their innovations to producers rather than peers. As the technological advances of their innovations increase, end user innovators' likelihood of transferring their innovation to producers increases more significantly than that of embedded user innovators.

This is the first paper to investigate the difference between end user innovators and embedded user innovators with respect to their diffusion channel selection as well as the moderating role of technological advances. The findings bring new perspectives to the domains of user–producer collaboration and technology transfer.

To provide an explicit model to address the relationships between the structural characteristics of a network and the diffusion of innovations through it. Further, based on the above relationships, this research tries to provide a way to infer diffusion curve parameters (innovation coefficient and imitation coefficient) from network structure (e.g. centralization).

Based on the network and innovation literatures, we develop a model explicitly relating the structural properties of the network to its innovation and imitation potential, and in turn to the observed diffusion parameters (innovation and imitation coefficients). We first employ current theoretical and empirical results to develop postulates linking six key network properties to innovation and imitation outcomes, and then seek to model their effects in an integrative manner. We argue that the innovation and imitation potentials of a network may be increased by strategically re‐designing the underlying network structure. We validated the model by searching the published empirical literature for available published data on network properties and innovation and imitation coefficients.

We validated the model by searching the published empirical literature for available published data on network properties and innovation and imitation coefficients. The results reported from various relevant research papers support our model.

This research shows that the innovation and imitation potentials of a network may be increased by strategically re‐designing the underlying network structure; hence, provide guidelines for new product managers to enhance the performance of innovative products by re‐design the underlying network structure.

The model developed in this paper is a breaking through result of synthesizing various traditions of diffusion research, ranging from anthropology and economics to marketing which were developed independently. The research explicitly modeled the diffusion process in terms of the underlying network structure of the relevant population allowing managers and researchers to directly link the diffusion parameters to the structural properties of the network. By doing so, it added value by making it possible to infer diffusion potential from directly measurable network properties. Vis‐à‐vis the network diffusion literature in particular, we added value by “unpacking” the diffusion process into innovation and imitation processes that form the building blocks of contagion. Moreover, we developed a holistic structural model of network diffusion which integrates the several network properties that have hitherto been studied separately.

This study aims to fill the void of previous research in organizational innovation. The understanding of the factors that affect intra-firm diffusion of innovations, which include the proactive management support and participation comprehensiveness from the adopting firm, as well as the provider’s support of innovation utilization has been advanced. In addition, the extent to which the consequent intra-firm diffusion affects both the adopter’s and provider’s benefits has been explored based on their relationship.

A mail questionnaire on the organizational purchase and utilization of customer relationship management (CRM)-type database systems was developed for collecting data. A random sample of 480 firms from the Hong Kong Chambers of Commerce Directory was obtained. From the initial phone calls, 343 firms currently using a CRM-type database system were identified, and the questionnaires were mailed to the managers of these firms. In total, 163 responses were finally returned with usable data, for a response rate of 47.5 per cent.

The current study focuses on the causes and the effects associated with successful diffusion and utilization of innovation within a firm. Using data from business-to-business markets, the results find that the two parties involved benefit when both proactively participate in the intra-firm diffusion process; that is, benefits are created for the adopter via improvement in efficiency; and for the provider via establishment of a long-term relationship and switching costs.

First, any moderating impact of the adopting firm’s technological capabilities was not analyzed. Second, the research results were obtained from a sample of software product innovations (especially database management system). Even though it could be assumed that these results can also be applicable to other types of innovations (e.g. process innovations), empirical tests of our framework based on different innovation typologies are still warranted.

First, for an innovation-adopting firm, we have shown that a wide use of purchased innovations among the organizational members is at least as important as the adoption of new innovations. Second, we have included the participation comprehensiveness of adoption decision, arguing that the organizational decision-making process is also crucial to stimulating intra-firm diffusion. Finally, and more importantly, our study calls attention to the provider’s role in expediting intra-firm diffusion.

First, we have suggested an analytic framework for intra-firm diffusion of an innovation and also provided its empirical support. Particularly, the current study has focused on the subsequent effects of intra-firm diffusion on both the adopter’s and the provider’s benefits. Second, we have examined further impact of the comprehensive participation of adoption decision on spreading innovation information, which subsequently stimulates the innovation’s intra-firm diffusion.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a company which developed an environmentally friendly innovation attempted to address diffusion issues. Specifically, the purpose is to describe the ways in which an electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure company, in partnership with a major car manufacturer, tried to address barriers to diffusion of an environmentally friendly innovation during the development stage to improve the likelihood of success and lessons learned from its failure.

The authors explore a single instrumental case of an Israeli company that developed infrastructure for EVs in partnership with a major automaker. The authors collected data using a series of semi-structured interviews at the companies’ headquarters, through direct observation in the company, and through the examination of archival and secondary data sources.

The authors find that the company tried to incorporate design features in both the product and organization to address key diffusion barriers identified through survey and consumer focus research. The study maps product/service design innovations for infrastructure that combined with multi-stage organizational diffusion strategies for EVs, were used to address both functional (usage, value, and risk) and psychological (tradition and image) barriers for mass-market adoption.

The study provides insights on how to incorporate information about barriers to adoption into product/service design and on the development of organizational-level diffusion strategy to address changes of customer’s behavior required by certain innovative sustainable solutions. In addition, the authors speculate potential causes for more recent developments with the technology that can serve as a lesson for future projects.

Past studies have advanced the knowledge about issues surrounding the adoption and diffusion of EVs. The study expands this stream of research by focussing on product/service and organizational strategy design and by illustrating, through an empirical exploratory case study, how a company attempted to overcome these obstacles. The authors advance various propositions and point out potential exciting avenues for future research on the dissemination of environmentally friendly innovations.

The purpose of this paper is to bring new empirical evidence to the controversial role of early adopters in the diffusion of innovations in industrial markets.

The authors apply an actor market configuration perspective to the analysis of four longitudinal case studies regarding the commercialization of new products in the textile, plastic and energy industries.

The diffusion of innovation is an interactive and iterative process where the commercializing firm engages in repeated interactions with different categories of companies that are targeted as potential early adopters. This process ends when the commercializing firm identifies a category of early adopters that can stimulate subsequent acceptance in the later market, by playing one of the following two roles, i.e. word-of-mouth trigger and industry benchmark. During this process, through which the role of the early adopters is constructed proactively by the commercializing firm, the product innovation is also subject to changes to provide a better fit with the selected category of early adopters.

The paper calls for a re-conceptualization of the diffusion process, from a passive identification of early adopters to an interactive process that entails a trial-and-error approach in the targeting and involvement of different categories of early adopters, which ends when the innovation reaches the desired levels of diffusion.

The study provides managers with a number of recommendations for selecting the most proper category of early adopters for their innovations, depending on the role they are more likely to play and the influence they will exert on subsequent acceptance in the later market.

The study provides managers with a number of recommendations for targeting, through a trial-and-error process, early adopters and working with them to champion the dissemination of new technologies.

This paper significantly adds to existing literature on the diffusion of innovation, which has up to now conceived early adopters as static and given entities, which cannot be proactively selected by the commercializing firm, and innovation as an immutable object.

Size is one of the most controversial influencing factors in the diffusion literature. This paper seeks to shed light on this controversy by examining the relationship between business size and the diffusion of both technological innovation and activity‐based costing (ABC) as an administrative innovation. The findings are expected to provide some guidelines for managers in helping them to determine how to facilitate the diffusion of innovations in their organisations.

The research adopts a longitudinal survey method to examine practices within the Plastics and Chemicals Industries Association, which is the pre‐eminent national body representing Australia's fourth largest manufacturing sector.

The study suggests a significant positive relationship between business size and both technological innovation and the implementation of ABC.

Knowledge of the impact of size on diffusion of innovation has been complicated by the mixed results of extant studies; the paper significantly contributes to this debate.