Abstract
Social networks form the basic structure for the diffusion of technologies throughout a society. We present a simple model of Morris [8] for this diffusion based on myopic best-response behavior of the agents and derive necessary and sufficient conditions for a new technology to inflitrate a network in which all agents are intially using an incumbant technology. We then discuss an extention of this model based on joint work with Kleinberg, Mahdian, and Wexler [6] which incorporates compatibility between technologies and discuss how this effects the diffusion. We find some surprising results: in some cases, for one technology to survive the introduction of another, the cost of adopting both technologies must be balanced within a narrow, intermediate range. We also extend our framework to the case of multiple technologies, where we find that a simple model captures the phenomenon of two firms adopting a limited “strategic alliance” to defend against a new, third technology.
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Immorlica, N. (2009). Technology Diffusion in Social Networks. In: Nielsen, M., Kučera, A., Miltersen, P.B., Palamidessi, C., Tůma, P., Valencia, F. (eds) SOFSEM 2009: Theory and Practice of Computer Science. SOFSEM 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5404. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-95891-8_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-95891-8_5
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