Review of 'Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition' on Goodreads
4 stars
An enjoyable textbook on the field of "how do ideas and technologies spread and become adopted". I think it says a lot that the second chapter is on The Diffusion of Diffusion Research analyzing the spread of these studies across Anthropology, Agriculture, Communication, etc (most public research has been done on agricultural and public health innovations, while marketing is probably the largest later adopter of the approach). Frequently throughout are suggestions for future improvements to studies and so fittingly the third chapter is entirely on Criticisms of Diffusion Research, from biases towards popular and successful innovations, biases towards the promoters and originators of technologies rather than the adopters and users, biases towards first-world (vs developing) and individual (vs collective) models of diffusion. The book is peppered with case studies across time and fields, and reflections by the author looking back on his 40+ years in the field.
