The Community Innovation Process

Abstract

Previous research into the community innovation process has tended to emphasize either intercommunity information flows and imitation or local need and political factors. This paper presents a conceptualization incorporating both sets of factors and stressing, in particular, the distinction between community innovations supported by a central pro pagator and those adopted solely on the basis of local initiative. In empirical analysis the former are represented by public housing and urban renewal, the latter by automated data processing and public water fluoridation. The major findings of the empirical analysis are that both information-related and local need and political factors are critical to the community innovation process, and that the distinction between sponsored and local initiative community innovations is particularly useful in explaining the decision to adopt.