4.3. Diffusion of innovations and lifelong learning
The diffusion of innovations refers to their dissemination among groups of individuals, in social systems, production plants, or organizations. This research aims to promote the diffusion of technological knowledge and decision-making model to decision-makers and end users. The diffusion of new innovations is dependent on the ability of the target group to adopt new products and on the ability of manufacturers to create a demand for them (cf. Chapter 1).
Innovativeness refers to the quality, skill or capacity for creating ideas and developing them into functional and economical solutions. Innovative organizations are typically customer-oriented and flexible in their operation. To promote innovation, operating methods that motivate the employees must be developed. This research concentrates on field technology innovations, including products, services, methods, and tools. By means of communication the recipients are informed of innovations.
The factors influencing the diffusion of field technology can be examined from the perspectives of relevance, resources, facilities, availability of innovations and innovation atmosphere. All of these influence the preparation and implementation of innovations. The interdependences of the factors are illustrated in Fig. 12 [14,59,92,93,94,95,96,97, 98].
Lifelong learning and cooperation. The dimensions of a work community are systems thinking, learning of individuals, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. The staff must participate in decision-making and in the planning of their own work. Control and supervision is the task of both teams and individuals, and there are no strict boundaries between departments. Appropriate rewarding, minimum hierarchies, teamwork, a positive atmosphere, and support to the training and personal development of individuals must be taken into account in the work community. Lifelong learning contributes to the ability to solve the problems and needs associated with field technology. This enhances the adoption of efficient decision-making models and criteria [94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119].
The need of technological knowledge, and its sheer amount, also increase the use of electronics information channels alongside with the human channels. The use of the Internet and Intranets enable extremely versatile retrieval and exchange of information. Hypermedia solutions, incorporating text, audio, video, animation, graphics, and exact heuristic information, greatly promote learning. Management systems may include information of numerous aspects of field technology, e.g. its topology, equipment, software, bus solutions, operational interfaces, user interfaces, applications, user experiences, references, and parallel solutions [120,121,122]. Nevertheless, responsibility for the decisions must always remain with people, however efficient the electronic channels may be.