Innovation Diffusion Among Coworkers: Evidence from Senior Doctors

Using a novel 15-year data set on surgeon adoption of a complex surgical innovation in the English National Health Service and an identification strategy based on surgeon mobility, this paper disentangles three channels of coworker influence on innovation diffusion: (1) peer network size, (2) influential “key players,” and (3) cumulative peer adoption. We find that a one standard deviation in peer connections boost innovation by 16%. Key players can either amplify or dampen diffusion, and peer adoption has a greater impact on less experienced individuals. These results highlight the value of targeting training to high impact network members to speed up diffusion. This work advances our understanding of how professional networks shape innovation diffusion, with implications for technology implementation. This paper was accepted by Stefan Scholtes, healthcare management. Funding: This work was supported by the European Research Council (ANR-17-EURE-0010, POEMH, Advanced Investigator Award HealthCareLabour REP-SCI-788529), the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project DP220101043) and the Health Foundation (Efficiency Research Programme). Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00496 .