User innovation

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 innovators 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.

ources

* Braun, Viktor R.G. (2007): Barriers to user-innovation & the paradigm of licensing to innovate, Doctoral dissertation: Hamburg University of Technology
* "Democratizing Innovation" (2005) ISBN 0-262-22074-1, [http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm 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, [http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/sources.htm Oxford University Press PDF]

ee also

*Creativity techniques
*Crowdsourcing
*List of emerging technologies
*Participatory design
*Professional amateurs
*Toolkits for User Innovation
*Threadless, a t-shirt company completely driven by user innovation
*Domestication theory

External links

* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/yourmoney/25Proto.html?_r=1&ref=yourmoney&oref=slogin New York Times on User Innovation (2007)]
* [http://dynamist.com/articles-speeches/nyt/innovation.html New York Times on User Innovation (2005)]
* [http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm Eric Von Hippel's books on user innovation] , available under the creative commons license.
* [http://usercontribution.intuit.com/ The Contribution Revolution wiki] collects information about user contribution systems in the business world. It is based on the [http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0810C&ml_issueid=BR0810&ml_subscriber=true&pageNumber=1&_requestid=300861 Harvard Business Review article of the same name] by Scott Cook