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The term technological change can refer to several different yet not incompatible concepts.

Contents 1 Sociology 1.1 Innovation 1.2 Communication channels 1.3 Social system 1.4 Time 2 Economics 3 References 4 See also

Underpinning the idea of technological change as a social process is general agreement on the importance of social context and communication. According to this model, technological change is seen as a social process involving adopters and others who are profoundly affected by cultural setting, political institutions and marketing strategies.

Emphasis has been on four key elements of the technological change process: (1) an innovative technology (2) communicated through certain channels (3) to members of a social system (4) who adopt it over a period of time.

There are five main attributes of innovative technologies which influence acceptance. These are relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. Relative advantage may be economic or non-economic, and is the degree to which an innovation is seen as superior to prior innovations fulfilling the same needs. It is positively related to acceptance (i.e., the higher the relative advantage, the higher the adoption level, and vice versa). Compatibilty is the degree to which an innovation appears consistent with existing values, past experiences, habits and needs to the potential adopter; a low level of compatibility will slow acceptance. Complexity is the degree to which an innovation appears difficult to understand and use; the more complex an innovation, the slower its acceptance. Trialability is the perceived degree to which an innovation may be tried on a limited basis, and is positively related to acceptance. Trialability can accelerate acceptance because small-scale testing reduces risk. Observability is the perceived degree to which results of innovating are visible to others and is positively related to acceptance.

Communication channels are the means by which a source conveys a message to a receiver. Information may be exchanged through two fundamentally different, yet complementary, channels of communication. Awareness is more often obtained through the mass media, while uncertainty reduction that leads to acceptance mostly results from face-to-face communication.

The social system provides a medium through which, and boundaries within which, and innovation is adopted. The structure of the social system affects technological change in several ways. Social norms, opinion leaders, change agents, and the consequences of innovations are all involved. Also involved are cultural setting, nature of political institutions, laws, policies and administrative structures.

Time enters into the acceptance process in several ways. The time dimension relates to the innovativeness of an individual or other adopter, which is the relative earlyness or lateness with which an innovation is adopted.

Technological change is a term that is used in economics to describe a change in the set of feasible production possibilities.

Neutral technological change refers to the behaviour of technological change in models. A technological innovation is Hicks neutral (following John Hicks (1932)) if the ratio of capital's marginal product to labour's marginal product is unchanged for a given capital to labour ratio. A technological innovation is Harrod neutral (following Hicks) if the technology is labour-augmenting (i.e. helps labor); it is Solow neutral if the technology is capital-augmenting (i.e. helps capital).

A synonym, diffusion of innovations, is used more often in business and marketing.

• Hicks, John (1932). The Theory of Wages. Macmillan.
• Jones, Charles I. (1997). Introduction to Economic Growth. W.W. Norton. ISBN 0393971740
• Kuhn, Thomas Samuel (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd edition. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226458083
• Mansfield, Edwin (2003). Microeconomics Theory and Applications, 11th edition. W.W. Norton ISBN 0393979180
• Rogers, Everett (2003). Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edition, Free Press. ISBN 0743222091

• Investment specific technological progress
• Technical change