National culture and innovation diffusion. Exploratory insights from agent-based modeling

• We study whether national culture has an impact on innovation diffusion processes.
• An exploratory agent-based simulation is implemented to examine the issue.
• Our simulations suggest that culture matters in shaping diffusion patterns.
• We advance a ranking of countries that are the most and least prone to diffusing innovations.

The present paper sets to conduct a theoretical investigation on the role of national culture in shaping innovation diffusion patterns in different markets. We build a culturally grounded agent-based model to examine the question and introduce cultural heterogeneity to our simulations by merging two of Hofstede's dimensions of culture (individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance) with Rogers' seminal work on innovation diffusion behavior. Our findings suggest that both dimensions of culture influence diffusion rates. The model also puts forward the importance of network topology as an enabling factor of national culture on diffusion processes.