Abstract
This paper aims at proposing a model of innovation-diffusion process into a social system in terms of a self-organizing system. The author has made a presentation of innovation-diffusion process at the previous ICBTT held at Kyoto in 2002 and published this work in 2003. Reexamining actual innovation-diffusion processes, the author presents a revised and, hopefully, evolving one, principally based on the dissipative structure theory. This has been first conceived by I. Prigogine and is one of the most leading self-organizing system theories. The innovation-diffusion model to be presented here has four main elements; a social system, an innovation, communications networks and dynamics. A social system is composed of more than one individual unit, developing a self-organizing system when an innovation diffuses into it. An innovation is composed of artifacts that are its embodiment not only conceptually but technologically, also developing a self-organizing system with the transformation of the social system. Communications networks are divided ideally into three; the local, the long-range communications networks and the one that interfaces the social system with its environment. Finally, both the social system and the innovation behave themselves dynamically via communications networks, coevolving with each other.
