User innovation refers to innovation by intermediate users (e.g. user firms) or consumer users (individual end-users or user communities), rather than by suppliers (producers or manufacturers).[1] This is a concept closely aligned to co-design and co-creation, and has been proven to result in more innovative solutions than traditional consultation methodologies.[2]
Eric von Hippel[3] and others[4][5][6] observed that many products and services are actually developed or at least refined, by users, at the site of implementation and use. These ideas are then moved back into the supply network. This is because products are developed to meet the widest possible need; when individual users face problems that the majority of consumers do not, they have no choice but to develop their own modifications to existing products, or entirely new products, to solve their issues. Often, user innovators will share their ideas with manufacturers in hopes of having them produce the product, a process called free revealing. However, user innovators also generate their own firms to commercialize their innovations and generate new markets, a process called "consumer-led market emergence." For example, research on how users innovated in multiple boardsports shows that some users capitalized on their innovations, founding firms in sports that became global markets.[7]
Based on research on the evolution of Internet technologies and open source software Ilkka Tuomi(Tuomi 2002) further highlighted the point that users are fundamentally social. User innovation, therefore, is also socially and socio-technically distributed innovation. According to Tuomi,[8] key uses are often unintended uses invented by user communities that reinterpret and reinvent the meaning of emerging technological opportunities.
The existence of user innovation, for example, by users of industrial robots, rather than the manufacturers of robots (Fleck 1988) is a core part of the argument against the Linear Innovation Model, i.e. innovation comes from research and development, is then marketed and 'diffuses' to end-users. Instead innovation is a non-linear process involving innovations at all stages.[9]
In 1986 Eric von Hippel introduced the lead user method that can be used to systematically learn about user innovation in order to apply it in new product development. In 2007 another specific type of user innovator, the creative consumer was introduced. These are consumers who adapt, modify, or transform a proprietary offering as opposed to creating completely new products.[10]
User innovation has a number of degrees: innovation of use,[11] innovation in services, innovation in configuration of technologies, and finally the innovation of novel technologies themselves. While most user innovation is concentrated in use and configuration of existing products and technologies, and is a normal part of long term innovation, new technologies that are easier for end-users to change and innovate with, and new channels of communication are making it much easier for user innovation to occur and have an impact.
Recent research has focused on Web-based forums that facilitate user (or customer) innovation - referred to as virtual customer environment, these forums help companies partner with their customers in various phases of product development as well as in other value creation activities. For example, Threadless, a T-shirt manufacturing company, relies on the contribution of online community members in the design process. The community includes a group of volunteer designers who submit designs and vote on the designs of others. In addition to free exposure, designers are provided monetary incentives including a $2,500 base award as well as a percentage of T-shirt sales. These incentives allow Threadless to encourage continual user contribution.[12]
↑ Nambisan, Satish; Agarwal, Ritu; Tanniru, Mohan (September 1999). "Organizational Mechanisms for Enhancing User Innovation in Information Technology". MIS Quarterly. 23 (3): 365. doi:10.2307/249468. JSTOR249468.
Bilgram, V.; Brem, A.; Voigt, K.-I.: User-Centric Innovations in New Product Development; Systematic Identification of Lead User Harnessing Interactive and Collaborative Online-Tools, in: International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 12 (2008), No. 3, pp.419–458.
Bogers, Marcel; Afuah, Allan; Bastian, Bettina (2010), "Users as innovators: A review, critique, and future research directions", Journal of Management, 36 (4): 857–875, doi:10.1177/0149206309353944, S2CID55469132
Braun, Viktor R.G. (2007): Barriers to user-innovation & the paradigm of licensing to innovate, Doctoral dissertation: Hamburg University of Technology
Fleck, James (1988), "Innofusion or Diffusation? The nature of technological development in robotics", Edinburgh PICT Working Paper No. 7
In business theory, disruptive innovation is innovation that creates a new market and value network or enters at the bottom of an existing market and eventually displaces established market-leading firms, products, and alliances. The concept was developed by the American academic Clayton Christensen and his collaborators beginning in 1995, and has been called the most influential business idea of the early 21st century. Lingfei Wu, Dashun Wang, and James A. Evans generalized this term to identify disruptive science and technological advances from more than 65 million papers, patents and software products that span the period 1954–2014. Their work was featured as the cover of the February 2019 issue of Nature and was selected as the Altmetric 100 most-discussed work in 2019.
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity realizing or redistributing value". Others have different definitions; a common element in the definitions is a focus on newness, improvement, and spread of ideas or technologies.
In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design, along with various business considerations. New product development is described broadly as the transformation of a market opportunity into a product available for sale. The products developed by an organisation provide the means for it to generate income. For many technology-intensive firms their approach is based on exploiting technological innovation in a rapidly changing market.
The technology acceptance model (TAM) is an information systems theory that models how users come to accept and use a technology.
An early adopter or lighthouse customer is an early customer of a given company, product, or technology. The term originates from Everett M. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (1962).
Eric von Hippel is an American economist and a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, specializing in the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He is best known for his work in developing the concept of user innovation – that end-users, rather than manufacturers, are responsible for a large amount of innovation. In order to describe this phenomenon, in 1986 he introduced the term lead user. Hippel's work has applications in business strategy and free/open source software (FOSS), and he is one of the most highly cited social scientists writing on FOSS. The BUGvonHippel, named for Eric von Hippel and bearing his name in Braille, is a breakout board module and an example of open-source hardware.
Open innovation is a term used to promote an information age mindset toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs. The benefits and driving forces behind increased openness have been noted and discussed as far back as the 1960s, especially as it pertains to interfirm cooperation in R&D. Use of the term 'open innovation' in reference to the increasing embrace of external cooperation in a complex world has been promoted in particular by Henry Chesbrough, adjunct professor and faculty director of the Center for Open Innovation of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, and Maire Tecnimont Chair of Open Innovation at Luiss.
Empathic design is a user-centered design approach that pays attention to the user's feelings toward a product. The empathic design process is sometimes mistakenly referred to as empathetic design.
Lead user is a term developed by American economist Eric von Hippel. His definition for lead user is:
Lead users face needs that will be general in a marketplace – but face them months or years before the bulk of that marketplace encounters them, and
Lead users are positioned to benefit significantly by obtaining a solution to their needs and so may innovate.
Service innovation is used to refer to many things. These include but not limited to:
Innovation in services, in service products – new or improved service products. Often this is contrasted with “technological innovation”, though service products can have technological elements. This sense of service innovation is closely related to service design and "new service development".
Innovation in service processes – new or improved ways of designing and producing services. This may include innovation in service delivery systems, though often this will be regarded instead as a service product innovation. Innovation of this sort may be technological, technique- or expertise-based, or a matter of work organization.
Innovation in service firms, organizations, and industries – organizational innovations, as well as service product and process innovations, and the management of innovation processes, within service organizations.
Innovation management is a combination of the management of innovation processes, and change management. It refers to product, business process, marketing and organizational innovation. Innovation management is the subject of ISO 56000 series standards being developed by ISO TC 279.
Karim R. Lakhani is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is the principal investigator of the Crowd Innovation Lab at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science. His research and teaching focuses on open and user innovation.
Corporate foresight has been conceptualised as a set of practices, a set of capabilities and an ability of a firm. It enables firms to detect discontinuous change early, interpret its consequences for the firm, and inform future courses of action to ensure the long-term survival and success of the company.
Satish Nambisan is the Nancy and Joseph Keithley Professor of Technology Management at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University.
Toolkits for user innovation and custom design are coordinated sets of “user-friendly” design tools. They are designed to support users who may wish to develop products or services for their own use. The problem toolkits are developed to solve is that, while user designers may know their own needs better than do producers, their technical design skills may be less than those of producer-employed developers. For example, expert users of tennis rackets – or expert users of custom integrated circuits – generally know more than producers do about the function they want a product to serve. However, they are often not as good as producer engineers at actually designing the product they need.
Maqbool Dada is a professor at Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University, with expertise in the areas of operations management, healthcare, and marketing. He is also a core faculty member at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
The economics of digitization is the field of economics that studies how digitization, digitalisation and digital transformation affects markets and how digital data can be used to study economics. Digitization is the process by which technology lowers the costs of storing, sharing, and analyzing data. This has changed how consumers behave, how industrial activity is organized, and how governments operate. The economics of digitization exists as a distinct field of economics for two reasons. First, new economic models are needed because many traditional assumptions about information no longer hold in a digitized world. Second, the new types of data generated by digitization require new methods for their analysis.
Susumu Ogawa is a Professor of Innovation and Marketing, Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University, Japan.
Many markets are structured as platform ecosystems, they can be open or closed platforms, where a stable core mediates the relationship between a wide range of complements and prospective end-users.
Kamalini Ramdas is a Professor of Management Science and Operations and Deloitte Chair in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at London Business School, with expertise in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, and operations management. Ramdas' research examines innovative approaches, including service innovation, operational innovation, and business model innovation, to accelerate value creation in various service and manufacturing industries.
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