The literature on technological innovation and technical change usually distinguishes between invention, innovation, diffusion and adoption. Diffusion isà defiedà asà theà processà yà hichà iovatiosà spreadà ithià adà acrossà ecooies.àAccording to some authors, in order to ensure successful technological diffusion, it is also necessary to have a range of systemic factors. In the political economy perspective, influences on technology adoption and diffusion can develop from government policies and incentives. Diffusion of innovation policies, in particular, aim at spreading technological capabilities throughout the industrial structure, facilitating the ongoing and the incremental adaptation to change. Economic literature on technology policies has focused predominantly on generation policies, underestimating the effects of policy interventions in the diffusion process. Nevertheless, it is also important to understand which policies need to be implemented to favour the diffusion of innovation because the adoption of a new technology creates positive economical and social effects. According to these considerations, the purpose of this paper is to carry out a review of the studies that have analyzed the policies able to support the diffusion of an innovation and to provide a framework that classifies these policies according to their effect on the diffusion of a new technology. We adopted an approach similar to the systematic reviews used in many studies, in which methodical searches and formal summaries of the literature are used to identify and classify results of all major studies on a particular topic. We searched the Scopus database for articles that had the word policyàadàtheàordsàdiffusio/adoptioàofàiovatio/techologyàiàtheàtopic field- title, key words and abstract. We therefore read through all the abstracts, or the full publication when we were unsure, to assess whether they dealt with the topic. This screening resulted in a short list of papers, then studied and assessed considering the conceptual framework. Considering the different variables that affect the diffusion process, theoretical contributions were classified in four research streams: country-focused, technology- focused, coherent adopter-focused and model-focused. The review reveals that only few papers are specifically focused on the role of policy to diffuse new technology, highlighting that the studies on the diffusion oriented policies are still few and fragmented. On the contrary, the most of the research in that field considers diffusion policies only in terms of practical implications. In order to overcome these gaps, the literature review provides a theoretical framework that links the policies to support the dissemination of an innovation to the barriers that hinders the diffusion of a new technology among a community of adopters. This framework it also useful to define a possible research agenda for future studies on the topic. For policy makers, the theoretical framework provides a conceptual tool to guide their choices in supporting the diffusion of relevant technologies, since policy intervention would depend on the nature of the barrier to diffusion of innovation.

Which Policies can Encourage the Diffusion of new Technologies? A Literature Review

PARMENTOLA, ADELE;SIMONI, MICHELE;TUTORE, Ilaria
2015-01-01

Abstract

The literature on technological innovation and technical change usually distinguishes between invention, innovation, diffusion and adoption. Diffusion isà defiedà asà theà processà yà hichà iovatiosà spreadà ithià adà acrossà ecooies.àAccording to some authors, in order to ensure successful technological diffusion, it is also necessary to have a range of systemic factors. In the political economy perspective, influences on technology adoption and diffusion can develop from government policies and incentives. Diffusion of innovation policies, in particular, aim at spreading technological capabilities throughout the industrial structure, facilitating the ongoing and the incremental adaptation to change. Economic literature on technology policies has focused predominantly on generation policies, underestimating the effects of policy interventions in the diffusion process. Nevertheless, it is also important to understand which policies need to be implemented to favour the diffusion of innovation because the adoption of a new technology creates positive economical and social effects. According to these considerations, the purpose of this paper is to carry out a review of the studies that have analyzed the policies able to support the diffusion of an innovation and to provide a framework that classifies these policies according to their effect on the diffusion of a new technology. We adopted an approach similar to the systematic reviews used in many studies, in which methodical searches and formal summaries of the literature are used to identify and classify results of all major studies on a particular topic. We searched the Scopus database for articles that had the word policyàadàtheàordsàdiffusio/adoptioàofàiovatio/techologyàiàtheàtopic field- title, key words and abstract. We therefore read through all the abstracts, or the full publication when we were unsure, to assess whether they dealt with the topic. This screening resulted in a short list of papers, then studied and assessed considering the conceptual framework. Considering the different variables that affect the diffusion process, theoretical contributions were classified in four research streams: country-focused, technology- focused, coherent adopter-focused and model-focused. The review reveals that only few papers are specifically focused on the role of policy to diffuse new technology, highlighting that the studies on the diffusion oriented policies are still few and fragmented. On the contrary, the most of the research in that field considers diffusion policies only in terms of practical implications. In order to overcome these gaps, the literature review provides a theoretical framework that links the policies to support the dissemination of an innovation to the barriers that hinders the diffusion of a new technology among a community of adopters. This framework it also useful to define a possible research agenda for future studies on the topic. For policy makers, the theoretical framework provides a conceptual tool to guide their choices in supporting the diffusion of relevant technologies, since policy intervention would depend on the nature of the barrier to diffusion of innovation.
2015
978-1-910810-50-7
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11367/56123
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