User innovation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

User innovation refers to innovations developed by consumers and end users, rather than manufacturers. Eric von Hippel of MIT discovered that most products and services are actually developed by users, who then give ideas to manufacturers. 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 innovations will share their ideas with manufacturers in hopes of having them produce the product, a process called free revealing.

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.

[edit] Sources

• Democratizing Innovation (2005) ISBN 0-262-22074-1, Creative Commons PDF
• von Hippel, Eric. 1986. Lead users: a source of novel product concepts. Management Science 32, 791–805
• The Sources of Innovation (1988) ISBN 0-19-509422-0, Oxford University Press PDF

[edit] See also

• Crowdsourcing
• Participatory design
• Professional amateurs
• Toolkits for User Innovation
• Threadless, a t-shirt company completely driven by user innovation

[edit] External links

• New York Times on User Innovation
• Eric Von Hippel's books on user innovation, available under the creative commons license.