Adoption of Innovation

Business, public, and governmental organizations all innovate to enhance operations, improve administration, succeed in competitive markets, and better serve their clients. Organizational innovation is a purposeful, systematic, and managed process that encompasses two core dimensions: generating something new for the market and adopting something new within the organization. Historically, research on innovation has emphasized generation over adoption, invention over imitation, and monetary over nonmonetary outcomes. This book shifts the focus to adoption, arguing that innovation advances through imitation and that adoption enables the diffusion of benefits across organizations. It offers a comprehensive foundation for understanding the theories and research surrounding the drivers, processes, and outcomes of innovation adoption. Key emerging topics include continuous improvement of adoption practices, complementarities among innovations, nonmonetary contributions, abandonment of adopted innovations, post-adoption decisions, and the broader consequences of innovation for individuals and the natural environment. The book also outlines promising directions for future inquiry.