Reinvention and adaptation into U.S. communities of five global health innovations

This thesis explores a distinction between types of changes made to innovations as they diffuse, based on the agents of those changes and the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) framework: Reinvention by the designers of innovations and adaptations by the implementers of those same innovations. This research was conducted as part of a more extensive study of five global health innovations, conducted by researchers at the Department of Communication at Michigan State University and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A portion of the interview data from that project collected via interviews with innovation designers and researchers, on the one hand, and with community-based adopters and implementers, on the other, were transcribed and content analyzed to answer two compelling questions: What is the frequency of changes-counted as instances of reinvention and adaptation, as discussed by designers, on the one hand, and implementers, on the other? Which innovation attributes, and in what proportions, are discussed when designers and implementers address changes to innovations? Results suggest that both designers and implementers discuss reinvention and adaptation in the diffusion process. The changes discussed mostly concerned modifications made to the components of innovations, adjustments made in reaction to a different environmental context or target population, and the tailoring of content. Results suggest that interviewees referred mostly to the innovation attributes of compatibility (24.6% of the comments), relative advantage (12.1%) and observability (11.7%) when discussing changes. Achieving a fit with adopters' needs-compatibility-appears to be most important to innovation designers and the implementers of those global health innovations.