David Langley

Adoption of behaviour: predicting success for major innovations

Purpose – The goal of this article is to show that memetics is particularly useful to predict the adoption of major innovations.Design/methodology/approach – Describes how TNO Telecom, an applied research institute in The Netherlands, adopted the theory of memetics to develop an instrument that predicts the adoption of major innovations. Explains and defines relevant aspects of this focus.Findings – Initial results are encouraging and suggest that the approach may provide qualitatively better results than the existing methods when applied to major innovations.Originality/value – Describes for the first time how the theory of memetics can be used to gain a real insight into the market adoption of major innovations as well as to focus and optimise product development.

Social media use in healthcare: A systematic review of effects on patients and on their relationship with healthcare professionals.

BackgroundSince the emergence of social media in 2004, a growing percentage of patients use this technology for health related reasons. To reflect on the alleged beneficial and potentially harmful effects of social media use by patients, the aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the extant literature on the effects of social media use for health related reasons on patients and their relationship with healthcare professionals.MethodsWe conducted a systematic literature review on empirical research regarding the effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons. The papers we included met the following selection criteria: (1) published in a peer-reviewed journal, (2) written in English, (3) full text available to the researcher, (4) contain primary empirical data, (5) the users of social media are patients, (6) the effects of patients using social media are clearly stated, (7) satisfy established quality criteria.ResultsInitially, a total of 1,743 articles were identified from which 22 were included in the study. From these articles six categories of patients’ use of social media were identified, namely: emotional, information, esteem, network support, social comparison and emotional expression. The types of use were found to lead to seven identified types of effects on patients, namely improved self-management and control, enhanced psychological well-being, and enhanced subjective well-being, diminished subjective well-being, addiction to social media, loss of privacy, and being targeted for promotion. Social media use by patients was found to affect the healthcare professional and patient relationship, by leading to more equal communication between the patient and healthcare professional, increased switching of doctors, harmonious relationships, and suboptimal interaction between the patient and healthcare professional.ConclusionsOur review provides insights into the emerging utilization of social media in healthcare. In particular, it identifies types of use by patients as well as the effects of such use, which may differ between patients and doctors. Accordingly, our results framework and propositions can serve to guide future research, and they also have practical implications for healthcare providers and policy makers.

Ten niche strategies to commercialize new high-tech products

There are serious gaps in the scientific literature relating to niche strategies as a means for commercializing new high-tech products. In particular, there is no clarity about what types of niche strategies can be distinguished, or how a niche strategy can be selected to suit a certain situation. In this paper, we identify generic actors, factors and functions that play a role in the commercialization of high-tech products, and that can form barriers to large-scale diffusion, thereby necessitating the implementation of a niche strategy. We analyse thirty-six different market situations and assess historical cases to identify the niche strategies that emerged. We find ten generic niche strategies, each of which can be applied in a number of situations. We present a model to aid managers in purposefully selecting an appropriate niche strategy.

Imitation analysis: Early prediction of the market demand for major innovations

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe a method of estimating the likelihood that a person with particular characteristics will imitate a particular new behaviour (i.e. the use of an innovation). This estimation can be used to provide a new form of forecast for the likely market demand for an innovation. Design/methodology/approach - This method, termed imitation analysis, is based on imitation theories from the behavioural sciences and is applied in two recent case studies in The Netherlands: broadcast TV on mobile phones and a mobile friend-network service. Findings - These cases illustrate how: the market segments with the highest potential can be identified; marketing communication can be focused on specific issues important for each segment (e.g. based on the highest imitation potential); product design can be improved (by highlighting the characteristics with the most room for improving the imitation potential); and market demand can be modelled (the overall chance of imitation occurring). Practical implications - Management implications for the two services, as well as the usefulness of imitation analysis in forecasting studies, are discussed. Originality/value - The paper expands on original work published in this journal in 2005, showing the value of the approach in real-world settings.

Activist versus Slacktivist: A Dual Path Model of Online Protest Mobilization

Business protests, aimed at changing firm behavior, increasingly make use of websites to mobilize large numbers of participants. However, we know little about how protest organizers can motivate a ...

Modeling Interdependent Socio-technical Networks: The Smart Grid—An Agent-Based Modeling Approach

The aim of this paper is to improve scientific modeling of interdependent socio-technical networks. In these networks the interplay between technical or infrastructural elements on the one hand and social and behavioral aspects on the other hand, plays an important role. Examples include electricity networks, financial networks, residential choice networks. We propose an Agent-Based Modeling approach to simulate interdependent technical and social network behavior, the effects of potential policy measures and the societal impact when disturbances occur, where we focus on a specific use case: the smart grid, an intelligent system for matching supply and demand of electricity.

Encouraging vaccination behavior through online social media

We explore the suitability of online social media (OSM) for influencing the public’s decision-making process regarding a vaccination to protect girls against HPV, a virus associated with cervical cancer. Parents of girls in the target cohort were invited to online discussion forums where they could discuss their opinions on the vaccination. They were exposed to promotion of the vaccination in one of four different ways, and coming from one of two different sources, i.e., peers or government health representatives. Following the health belief model (HBM), these messages served as cues to action. Using a novel network analysis approach, we find that the HBM does not adequately account for influence via OSM. Specifically we show that vaccination decisions are not taken in social isolation, a fact thus far ignored by various forms of the HBM. Implications for studies assessing the use of online channels for health communication are discussed.

Social Media Enabled Interactions in Healthcare: Towards a Typology

Social media is increasingly used by healthcare users and providers to connect and communicate with each other. Such use is changing the interactions in healthcare and it is not clear what effects this may have for healthcare provision. Although it could be beneficial to both parties, it could also bring threats for healthcare providers and disrupt the healthcare system. Therefore, it is important to understand who interacts, about what and how these interactions can be categorized into a typology. In this way, we can attain a better grasp of the potential benefits and threats social media could have for healthcare providers and healthcare in general. We employ qualitative content analysis to six contrasting categories of social media and study interactions between healthcare users and with healthcare providers. We identify nine topics, propose six archetypical interactions on social media in the healthcare domain and propose how these archetypical interactions can be categorized in a typology. In this way, we answer a call for research within the information systems (IS) field in healthcare on who is using social media and in what ways. Thus, we provide a foundation for future research on the effects of social media in healthcare

Analyzing Discussions on Twitter: Case Study on HPV Vaccinations

In this work we analyze the discussions on Twitter around the Human papillomavirus HPV vaccinations. We collect a dataset consisting of tweets related to the HPV vaccinations by searching for relevant keywords, by retrieving the conversations on Twitter, and by retrieving tweets from our user group mentioning semi-relevant keywords. We find that by tracking the conversations on Twitter relevant tweets can be found with reasonable precision. Although sentiments and opinions change regularly in a discussion, we find few cases of topic drift.

The social contagion of mobile television

This paper explores an emerging approach to understand the adoption and diffusion of mobile devices and services, namely social contagion. Due to the publicly visible nature of mobile devices, we propose that the influence of those around us has a large effect on the decision to adopt a new service. We describe this approach and its application to a new mobile service, Mobile Television, based on the Digital Video Broadcasting -- Handheld format. Results show how the market segments with the highest potential for social contagion can be identified for this service and how marketing communication can be focused on specific issues which stimulate social contagion in each segment.