Cities with more psychologically open populations tend to adopt platform innovations earlier, according to new research led by Tobias Ebert of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
The study looked at the early spread of three types of disruptive innovation across hundreds of US metropolitan regions: accommodation-sharing platforms such as Airbnb, ride-sharing platforms such as Uber, and social media platforms, using Flickr as an example.
The differences between places were striking. In the first five years after accommodation-sharing platforms emerged, San Diego had four times as many hosts per head of population as Minneapolis. For ride-sharing, San Diego had more than twice as many drivers per head.
Openness as social infrastructure
The researchers analysed personality data from more than 3 million residents across 349 US cities. Regions with higher average levels of psychological openness, a personality trait linked to curiosity, receptiveness to new experiences and a willingness to explore unfamiliar ideas, showed greater early adoption across all three platforms.
To measure adoption of accommodation and ride-sharing platforms, the team used US tax records to identify new non-employer businesses in the relevant industries. For social media, they used a random sample of 80 million photographs uploaded to Flickr in the US between 2005 and 2015.
The link between openness and early adoption held after accounting for other regional factors, including demographics, income, education, how urban an area is, internet access and other personality traits.
“For businesses introducing new innovations, understanding the people and places most open to change could be just as important as understanding the technology itself. Regions with greater openness may provide a more receptive environment for new business models to take hold and grow,” says researcher Tobias Ebert.
What it means for business
The findings suggest psychological openness may help explain why some places are more receptive to innovation than others. The researchers argue that openness can act as a form of social infrastructure, supporting experimentation, participation and the wider acceptance of new ways of doing things.
The study highlights the importance of looking beyond economic and technological conditions when examining how innovations spread: the character of the people adopting them may also shape how quickly they take off. The research was published in the journal Research Policy.
