Communication of Innovation: Marketing, Diffusion, and Frameworks

In the innovation economy, communication of innovation can encompass all market-related activities in technology and innovation management on a strategic and operational level (Trommsdorff and Steinhoff 2007) to commercialize innovation successfully. This implies a need for management frameworks, for instance, regarding integrated marketing communication (e.g., Bruhn 2006, 2008, 2009) to communicate consistently and continually about innovations and innovationrelated issues. Moreover, innovation communication in corporate communication focuses on the presentation of innovations and the organization’s innovative capability to establish long-term stakeholder relationships and constructs, such as corporate reputation, on the organizational level (e.g., Mast and Zerfaß 2005; Mast et al. 2005; Zerfaß and Möslein 2009). However, communication can also be examined from a social process perspective (e.g., Rogers 1995, 2003). The communicative perspective in innovation diffusion research concentrates on three different types of communication in social systems (Peres et al. 2010) and points out managerial implications, for instance, word-of-mouth communication may represent an effective marketing tool for enterprises to systematically facilitate an individual’s decision-making processes to invest in innovation (Mazzarol 2011).