Market potential dynamics and diffusion od innovations: modelling synergy between two driving forces

The presence of a slowdown in new products’ life cycle has recently received notable attention by many innovation diffusion scholars, that have tried to explain and model it on a typical dualmarket hypothesis. In this paper we propose an alternative explanation, based on the co–evolutionary model by Guseo and Guidolin, where diffusion results from the synergy between two driving forces: communication and adoption.We test the model on sales data of some pharmaceutical drugs presenting a slowdown in their life cycle. A deeper analysis of communication and adoption interaction, based on the likelihood ratio order can inform on which of the two had a driving role in early diffusion.