Innovation adoption: Broadcasting vs. Virality

TL;DR

This paper investigates how broadcasting and virality as diffusion channels influence innovation adoption, revealing their distinct roles and dynamics across different diffusion stages through a novel analytical approach.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to analyze the interplay between broadcasting and virality in innovation diffusion using citation and co-authorship data.

Findings

Broadcasting is more influential in early diffusion stages.

Virality leads to faster diffusion and repetitive adoption.

Virality can eventually surpass broadcasting in influence.

Abstract

Diffusion channels are critical to determining the adoption scale which leads to the ultimate impact of an innovation. The aim of this study is to develop an integrative understanding of the impact of two diffusion channels (i.e., broadcasting vs virality) on innovation adoption. Using citations of a series of classic algorithms and the time series of co-authorship as the footprints of their diffusion trajectories, we propose a novel method to analyze the intertwining relationships between broadcasting and virality in the innovation diffusion process. Our findings show that broadcasting and virality have similar diffusion power, but play different roles across diffusion stages. Broadcasting is more powerful in the early stages but may be gradually caught up or even surpassed by virality in the later period. Meanwhile, diffusion speed in virality is significantly faster than broadcasting and members from virality channels tend to adopt the same innovation repetitively.