Innovation includes not only technological improvements but also improvements in the way things are done. In a process of agricultural technological innovation, a series of actors are involved who design, adjust, implement the change of process or product corresponding to innovation (^{Farinós, 1998}).

There is a low incidence of agricultural innovation system in the capacity of the actors involved in productive activities (^{Muñoz et al., 2010}). This, as a result of a weak link between research centers, higher education institutions, the private sector and government agencies with the producer or end user of innovation and targeting low budget training programs and technical assistance (^{Espejel et al., 2014}).

For a technology to become innovation, it must be known, used and add value in its implementation. Innovation is the implementation of a new or improved product, process or service, a new marketing method, organization for the practice of a business or a new form of external relations (OECD, 2011). Analysis of the factors that restrict or encourage the use of innovations by producers is a current issue, considering that there are state and federal programs that allocate resources for technical assistance and training (^{Cuevas et al., 2013}).

It was designed and implemented an initial survey to collect productive, technical, administrative and commercial in the units livestock production (UPP for its acronym in Spanish) was applied in May 2012. At the end of the service a final survey to applied the impact of the service in December 2012.

Subsequently, with the basis of the methodology of participatory assessment (DP for its acronym in Spanish) (^{Geilfus, 2002}), in April 2012 a workshop was conducted to determine the critical factors in sheep production, which involved 63 producers and six officers technicians. A list of problems was prepared based on the method of causality, for this prioritization matrix was generated (^{Ortegon et al., 2005}).

The used network analysis and calculation the adoption rate of innovation (INAI for its acronym in Spanish) (^{Aguilar-Gallegos et al., 2015}). Based on field information database for network analysis was generated, the UCINET 6, version 6.232 software was used. 2010 (^{Borgatti et al., 2002}) for the calculate indicators of network. The density is defined as the percentage of the possible relationships between (^{Borgatti et al., 2002}). The formula for obtaining is.

Where: l= number of relationships between n(n-1)= number of possible relations.

The size of the network correspond the number of producers within the organization (^{Borgatti et al., 2002}). The centralization index detect the influence of a small actor or actors within the network (^{Rendón et al., 2007}).

Where: d= is the degree of each actor; D= is the maximum degree of an actor in the graph; n= is the total players.

The act or diffuser is the source and innovations and information (^{Borgatti and Dreyfus 2003}):

Where: d_mj= is the distance from the last node to any other node is 1; N= is the total number of nodes.

Comparative analysis of INAI (^{Aguilar-Gallegos et al., 2015}) allowed assess the level of contribution of the actions of agents in terms of technical capacity on producers. The INAI was calculated.

Where: INAI_I= rate of adoption of innovations of the i-th producer; IAIC_ik= adop tion rate of i-th producer in the k-th category; K= number total categories.

The results indicate that the producers interviewed have an average age of 50 years and experience in sheep production in 21 years. The average size is 43 animals UPP. This coincides with the study on the characterization of ovine chain (^{COFUPRO, 2002}), who identified herds averaging 40 head. In San Luis Potosí report an average of 38 animals (^{Trejo et al., 2011}). The 91.3% of UPP finished lamb obtained, weighing 40 to 45 kg, and 8.7% production of lamb at weaning of 18 and 20 kg. On the revenue producer, 40% comes from sheep activity, 35% in agriculture, 7% comes from hiring as an employee, 7% of the cattle, 4% of the commercial activity, 3% of pay their services as day laborers, 2% comes from remittances and the remaining 2% from other activity. The 50% of producers perceive sheep production as savings, 47% as a business, and 3% as a family tradition.

The main issues focused on high production costs (84%), dependence on external food (65%), limited availability of specialized food (60%), high incidence of disease (48%) (Table 1). ^{Orona et al. (2014)} points out that the low level of profitability and sustainability concerns deficient nutrition, health, reproductive and genetic management of herds.

Fuente: elaboración con datos de la ELB y diagnóstico participativo con productores, 2012.

Table 1 Problems identified through participatory diagnosis with producers.  

Based on the problems package defined innovations to improve yield: 1) creep feeding; 2) controlled saddle; 3) diet of the last third of gestation to females; 4) mineral mixture; 5) lotification animals; 6) internal and external worming; and 7) calendar vaccination. ^{Vilaboa et al. (2006)} and ^{Trejo et al. (2011)} consider important food, sanity and reproduction techniques, and ^{Martínez et al. (2010)} reduce production costs.

Initially transmitting knowledge among producers following the intervention of technicians, network analysis indicated that technicians are a source of innovation. Producers P07 and P16 have the profile of diffusers (Figure 1). The initial centralization indicator was less than 4%, and later it increased to 29.7%, which indicates that there were actors that concentrated the learning relationships (producer 07 and producer 16) (Figure 1). This contributed or to increase 72.3% INAI in the area of health and prevention and 66.7% in nutrition, which have a greater impact on performance.

Figure 1 Network technique knowledge exchange between ELB and ELF.  

The areas that showed a lower INAI were genetic reproduction (31.8%), organization and market (15.3%), administration (26.2%) due to the complexity of the processes.