Innovation Adoption Attributes: A Review and Synthesis of Research Findings

Purpose Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory typically concerns attributes that steer the process of inducing new ideas through various communication channels, which essentially diffuse different types of innovations into different systems. After Rogers, Tornatzky and Klein presented 30 such attributes (five of which were Rogers’) that steered the process of innovation diffusion. This paper aims to use a systematic approach in reviewing the literature pertaining to these thirty attributes, followed by the meta-analysis of the articles collated in relevance to these attributes. Design/methodology/approach Publications in the time frame of 1996 mid 2011 in this field of literature have been shortlisted for this review. A total of 223 innovation articles are studied in detail to collate the relevant data needed to reflect on the various informative trends exhibited by the shortlisted innovation attributes. Findings An analysis of these trends will be carried out across three different categories – [I] Subjective Analysis [II] Seven features of an ideal innovation attribute study (Approach, Dependent Variable, Study Type, Instrument, Measure, Number of attributes, Number of innovations, Adopting unit) [III] Antecedents and descendants of the innovation attributes, which altogether will be used deduce findings, limitations and suggestions for future research