Quotes from Eric von Hippel

hard to create. One will very likely be rejected with the rebuke that one should not spoil the fun! Pleasure as a motivator can apply to the development of commercially

the Sources of Innovation: The Case of Scientific Instruments. Research Policy 23, no. 4: 459-469.

Perhaps you can change the wallpaper, but you are less likely to change Uncle Bill, your kids, your established tastes with respect to a living environment, or your resource constraints.

high-performance windsurfing techniques and equipment in Hawaii by an informal user group. High-performance windsurfing involves acrobatics such as jumps and flips and turns in mid-air. Larry Stanley, a pioneer in high-performance windsurfing, described the development of a major innovation in technique and equipment

1978 Jurgen Honscheid came over from West Germany for the first Hawaiian World Cup and discovered jumping, which was new to him, although Mike Horgan and I were jumping in 1974 and 1975. There was a new enthusiasm for jumping and we were all trying to outdo each other by jumping higher and higher. The problem was that ... the riders flew off in mid-air because there was no way to keep the board with you-and

Then I remembered the Chip, a small experimental board we had built with footstraps, and thought it's dumb not to use this for jumping. That's when I first started jumping with footstraps and discovering controlled flight. I could go so much faster

Early in my research on the democratization of innovation I was very fortunate to gain five major academic mentors and friends. Nathan Rosenberg, Richard Nelson, Zvi Griliches, Edwin Mansfield, and Ann Carter all provided crucial support

For example, Boeing is a manufacturer of airplanes, but it is also a user of machine tools. If we were examining innovations developed by Boeing for the airplanes it sells, we would consider Boeing a manufacturer-innovator in those cases. But if we were considering innovations in metal-forming machinery developed by Boeing for in-house use in building airplanes, we

national competitive advantage

want by designing it for themselves. And innovation by users appears to increase social welfare. At the same time, the ongoing shift of product-development activities from manufacturers to users is painful

Community On and Off the Internet. Working paper, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto.

the cost incurred by the agent to commit itself not to act against the principal's interest (the bonding cost), and (3) costs associated with an outcome that does not fully serve the interests of the principal

she) follows the interests of the principal, (2) the cost incurred by the agent to commit itself not to act against the principal's interest (the bonding cost), and (3) costs associated with an outcome that does not fully serve the interests of the principal (Jensen

Early in my research on the democratization of innovation I was very fortunate to gain five major academic mentors

to incorporate the materials and processes it has in stock and expects to use in future even if this produces a boot that is not precisely right for the present customer.

addressed by new institutional forms, such as the user innovation communities that will be studied later in this book. Chapter 4 concludes

one might expect in view of the potentially higher level of competitive loss free revealing would entail.

that case, more than one user may invest in developing the same thing independently, owing to market failure. This results in a waste of resources from the point of view of social welfare. The problem can be addressed

created specifically to separate the problem-solving tasks requiring access to a manufacturer's sticky solution information from those requiring access to users' sticky need information. The same basic principle can be illustrated in a less technical context: food design. In this field, manufacturer-based designers have traditionally undertaken the entire job of developing a novel food, and so they have freely blended need-specific design into any or all of the

1996, pp. 774-775) elaborated on the original SCOT model by pointing out that the way a product is interpreted is not restricted to the design stage of a technology

technology-related information was associated in a significant

equipment in Hawaii by an informal user group. High-performance windsurfing involves acrobatics such as jumps and flips and turns in mid-air. Larry Stanley, a pioneer in high-performance windsurfing, described the development of a major innovation in technique and equipment to Sonali Shah:

In this book I explain in detail how the emerging process of user-centric, democratized innovation works. I also explain how innovation by users provides a very necessary complement to and feedstock for manufacturer innovation.

into the air, but you could land the thing, and not only that, but you could change direction in the air! The whole sport of high-performance