Successful Diffusion and Adoption of Innovation as a Means to Increase Competitiveness of Enterprises
Successful Diffusion and Adoption of Innovation as a Means to Increase Competitiveness of Enterprises

Summary/Abstract: The context of innovation research (Boden, 1991; Slater, Narver, 1994; Bessant, 2003, Trott, 2003 and others) in theoretical as well as practical levels reveals the unity of researchers’ opinions stating that innovation is manifested in the interaction of the scientific research base, technology development, and market needs. When studying the latter aspect (Porter, 1985; Sounder, 1988; Baker, 1999; Jakubavičius, 2003; Hoffman, Czinkota et al., 2005 and others), more and more often the innovation creation process is chosen as the scientific research object. When evaluating cases of innovation failure, attention is drawn to the management of the innovation creation process whereas enterprises experience much bigger losses due to innovation that failed during the process of diffusion and adoption. Therefore it is important for enterprises to seek exclusiveness by innovation to find ways that would allow increasing the probability of successful diffusion and adoption of innovation. On this basis this article analyses the following scientific problem: what are the factors that determine successful diffusion and adoption of innovation in the market, what are their links to the process of diffusion and adoption of innovation and outcomes of consumer behaviour? The aim of the article is to identify and substantiate theoretically the factors that determine successful diffusion and adoption of innovation, revealing their importance for increasing competitiveness of enterprises. Striving to achieve the formulated aim, firstly analysis of the current research level of the problem of diffusion and adoption of innovation is performed in the article. Its results show that most identified factors that determine innovation success in the market are attributed to the process of innovation creation. In this context a question arises: what are the factors that determine success of adopted innovation during its further diffusion in the market? Therefore a more detailed analysis of factors, related to the diffusion process, that determine successful adoption of innovation is performed. Elements of the process of diffusion of innovation identified in the scientific discussion – innovation, communication, social system and time – are used for this study. Besides during the analysis the aim to reveal the link between factors that determine innovation success and the identified stages of the process of adoption of innovation as well as categories of adopters is pursued. Having summarized the results of the performed theoretical studies, proposed description of factors that determine successful diffusion and adoption of innovation is made. This may be called the main result of the scientific research that unites factors that may be attributed to the process of innovation creation and new factors that were identified based on separate elements of the process of diffusion of innovation, all of which determine successful adoption of innovation.

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