Talk:Diffusion (business)/Archive 1

Integration
I would like to integrate this section to the section about diffusion of innovations. --MaxB 13:01, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I considered merging the two also. I decided not to because although the two articles cover the same topic, their perspective in very different. The new diffusion of innovations article is writen from a sociological perspective whereas the original Diffusion (business) article is from a business perspective. I decided not to merge them because the process would basicly involve deciding which perspective to choose. If you decide to merge them try to speak to both audiences. mydogategodshat 19:55, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Would it not just be nice to bring those two worlds together? --MaxB 09:11, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Business is a social science. Most business theories draw heavily from sociology, anthropology, communications, and the like. (Even Geoffrey Moore is an English professor.) I'm not sure why we need to separate diffusion (business) from diffusion of innovations or diffusion (anthropology). The basic tenets of diffusion (anthropology) hold for diffusion (business). Everett Rogers' work initially focused on commercial products and was easily applied to his later work in health, education, and non-commercial research. --Westendgirl 21:31, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * How about making diffusion (business) a general article and make diffusion of innovations a more specific article about Rogers' work. We do need some way of differentiating them from diffusion in physics, acoustics, genetics, etc.  mydogategodshat 05:43, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

mydogategodshat 05:38, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Although Rogers was the most famous diffusion of innovations specialist, he was not the only one. Diffusion of innovations reaches far beyond what I wrote in the current article. It has to do with the spread of new ideas. This shows up in a variety of disciplines. --Westendgirl 00:07, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The important thing to keep in mind is that just because a concept is adopted by business does not mean it is a business concept! "Bringing these two worlds together" means explaining Diffusion of Innovations in business terms, and as others have mentioned, it has much broader applicability, adopted in contemporary research in many fields not directly related to business (including language policy, in my case). The development of the theory is also quite different from that of historical linguistics and cultural anthropology (I'm not sure why anthropology claims it on that latter page, because cultural diffusion has not traditionally been explained in terms of S curves, though no doubt it can be applied there as well). Diffusion of Innovations is at its root a social theory with broad applicability and needs preservation and expansion, not merging. A link to the business page (and anthropology page) should suffice.--74.134.253.192 17:36, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Agree with comment above. DOI theory forms the basis for diverse applications - only one of which is business. Linking the two is the best approach - separate theory from application.--Jepling 17:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

In Economics, the term "Diffusion of Innovations" is used interchangeable with "Technological Change"; the second synonym is older and a bit more theoretical. Another article to merge? Yurakm 00:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)