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Minority Migrations and the Diffusion of Technology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Warren C. Scoville
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles

Extract

The process of technical change from the economist's viewpoint may be broken down into three phases: invention, innovation, and diffusion. Invention, or the increase in technological possibilities, is the discovery or perception of new configurations of technical processes or principles that alter the array of possible production functions. An innovation consists of using any given production function for the “first” time. Diffusion is basically imitative and involves the gradual replacement of old methods by the new. One example will suffice to illustrate these distinctions. The invention of the automatic bottle machine consisted of the conception, experimentation, and model-building activities of Michael J. Owens; the pioneering efforts of the entrepreneurs at Toledo, Ohio, to demonstrate that the new production function was both practical and economically feasible constituted the innovational phase; and the gradual replacement of hand-blown and semiautomatic machine methods by the new process in both American and foreign markets involved diffusion.

Type
Spread of Techniques
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1951

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References

1 I wish to acknowledge the many and stimulating discussions on this topic I have had with my colleague, Dr. William J. J. Smith, and with members of my graduate seminar (especially Messrs. Arthur J. Montgomery, Oren G. O'Neill, Richard Spangler, and Louis H. Stern). A John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and a grant from the Bureau of Business and Economic Research of the University of California for 1948–1949 permitted me to gather the data on the French Huguenots.