Master of Knowledge Management with Multimedia: February 2016

We are given mini assignment for the Organization Learning course. The are two task, one to find definition and another to briefly explain theory of 'Diffusion of Innovation'. The definition of term given as following;

Organization Learning- Organization-wide continuous process that enhances its collective ability to accept, make sense of, and respond to internal and external change. Organizational learning and is more than the sum of the information held by employees. It requires systematic integration and collective interpretation of new knowledge that leads to collective action and involves risk taking as experimentation.
Learning Organization-Organization that acquires knowledge and innovates fast enough to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing environment. Learning Organizations;(a) create a culture that encourages and supports continuous employee learning, critical thinking, and risk taking with new ideas, (b) allow mistakes, and value employee contributions, (c) learn from experience and experiment, and (d) disseminate the new knowledge throughout the organization for incorporation into day-to-day activities.
Learning - Measurable and relatively permanent change in behavior through experience, instruction, or study. Whereas individual learning is selective, group learning is essentially political its outcomes depend largely on power playing in the group. Learning itself cannot be measured, but its results can be. In the words of Harvard Business School psychologist Chris Argyris, learning is "detection and correction of error" where an error means "any mismatch between our intentions and what actually happens.
Experience - Familiarity with a skill or field of knowledge acquired over months or years of actual practice and which, presumably, has resulted in superior understanding or mastery.
Knowledge - In an organizational context, knowledge is the sum of what is known and resides in the intelligence and the competence of people.

The next question what is Diffusion of Innovation? Before i explain details of the theory let dive into the cartoon diagram showed below, i believe the diagram will ease us.

Believe or not, the theory is develop way back in 60s by E.M Rogers in 1962. It originally originated from communication to explain how an product, technology, idea diffuse into the community. The diffusion may take period of time. The end result of this diffusion the community adopt or take up the product, technology or idea. The success of adopt the community must accept the product, technology or idea.

As shown in the diagram, there are five category of community and each of them have different characteristic. So, if your are policy maker and wants the policy to be adopted, it is important to understand the characteristic of the target population/community. When promoting or selling the ideas, there are different tactics used to appeal to the different adopter categories.

Innovators - These are people who want to be the first to try the innovation. They are venturesome and interested in new ideas. These people are very willing to take risks, and are often the first to develop new ideas. Very little, if anything, needs to be done to appeal to this population.

Early Adopters - These are people who represent opinion leaders. They enjoy leadership roles, and embrace change opportunities. They are already aware of the need to change and so are very comfortable adopting new ideas. Strategies to appeal to this population include howto manuals and information sheets on implementation. They do not need information to convince them to change.

Early Majority - These people are rarely leaders, but they do adopt new ideas before the average person. That said, they typically need to see evidence that the innovation works before they are willing to adopt it. Strategies to appeal to this population include success stories and evidence of the innovation's effectiveness.

Late Majority - These people are skeptical of change, and will only adopt an innovation after it has been tried by the majority. Strategies to appeal to this population include information on how many other people have tried the innovation and have adopted it successfully.

Laggards - These people are bound by tradition and very conservative. They are very skeptical of change and are the hardest group to bring on board. Strategies to appeal to this population include statistics, fear appeals, and pressure from people in the other adopter groups

This is the few links, explain the application of the theory in other fields such as medical, marketing and social media. Hope you enjoy reading it.