<P> Recent research by Wear shows, that particularly in regional and rural areas, significantly more innovation takes place in communities which have stronger inter-personal networks . </P> <P> Innovations are often adopted by organizations through two types of innovation - decisions: collective innovation decisions and authority innovation decisions . The collective decision occurs when adoption is by consensus . The authority decision occurs by adoption among very few individuals with high positions of power within an organization . Unlike the optional innovation decision process, these decision processes only occur within an organization or hierarchical group . Within an organization certain individuals are termed "champions" who stand behind an innovation and break through opposition . The champion plays a very similar role as the champion used within the efficiency business model Six Sigma . The process contains five stages that are slightly similar to the innovation - decision process that individuals undertake . These stages are: agenda - setting, matching, redefining / restructuring, clarifying and routinizing . </P> <P> Diffusion of Innovations has been applied beyond its original domains . In the case of political science and administration, policy diffusion focuses on how institutional innovations are adopted by other institutions, at the local, state, or country level . An alternative term is' policy transfer' where the focus is more on the agents of diffusion and the diffusion of policy knowledge, such as in the work of Diane Stone . Specifically, policy transfer can be defined as "knowledge about how policies administrative arrangements, institutions, and ideas in one political setting (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions, and ideas in another political setting". </P> <P> The first interests with regards to policy diffusion were focused in time variation or state lottery adoption, but more recently interest has shifted towards mechanisms (emulation, learning and coercion) or in channels of diffusion where researchers find that regulatory agency creation is transmitted by country and sector channels . At the local level, examining popular city - level policies make it easy to find patterns in diffusion through measuring public awareness . At the international level, economic policies have been thought to transfer among countries according to local politicians' learning of successes and failures elsewhere and outside mandates made by global financial organizations . As a group of countries succeed with a set of policies, others follow, as exemplified by the deregulation and liberalization across the developing world after the successes of the Asian Tigers . The reintroduction of regulations in the early 2000s also shows this learning process, which would fit under the stages of knowledge and decision, can be seen as lessons learned by following China's successful growth . </P>

In the diffusion theory adopters who are seen as opinion leaders are