Innovation Translation and Innovation Diffusion: A Comparison of Two Different Approaches to Theorising Technological Innovation

The process of innovation involves getting new ideas accepted and new technologies adopted and used. A number of approaches to the theorising of technological innovation exist, but this article will compare and contrast just two: Innovation Diffusion and Innovation Translation, giving examples of how each approach is used in different situations. While there are many advantages to use of a Translation approach, it is too simplistic to suggest that Translation always offers a better approach than Diffusion, and the article proposes that perhaps it should not be a case of either one approach or the other but the use of whichever is most appropriate to a particular investigation.