Innovation diffusion and territorial inertia

The difficulties in developing and implementing innovative processes in a rural area can result from a number of obstacles impeding the diffusion of innovation among local agents whose causes, types and sizes can be of very different nature. Literature has deeply analyzed the characteristics and consequences of the resistances to innovation but, among the sources of impediments and failure of innovation, inertia can play a not secondary role. This phenomenon has been at the core of many sector researches in psychology, in organization science, in economics and in management studies but empirical observations can highlight the symptoms of a multi-facet, pervasive and widespread inertia at territorial level whose explanation cannot be ascribed only to a sector analysis for the presence of many feedback chains and reciprocal influences among different social dimensions and conditions (individual, group, organization and institutional levels). Within this perspective, this kind of territorial inertia (whose pervasiveness makes its identification and analysis extremely difficult) is likely to be the result of local networks’ pathological performances having at its bases facilitating, predisposition, contagious and diffusion factors characterizing the local agents operating within the same rural area.