Quotes from Eric von Hippel

Moreover, individual users do not have to develop everything they need on their own:

the innovate-or-buy decision follows. This model shows in a quantitative way that user firms with unique needs

When I say that innovation is being democratized, I mean that users of products and services-both firms and individual consumers-are increasingly able to innovate for themselves. User-centered innovation

than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents. Moreover, individual users do not

Later, I collaborated with a number of wonderful co-authors, all of whom are friends as well: Stan Finkelstein

Pamela Morrison, William Riggs, John Roberts, Stephan Schrader, Mary Sonnack, Stefan Thomke, Marcie Tyre

user-centered innovation process just illustrated is in sharp contrast

The trend toward democratization of innovation applies to information products such as software and also to physical products. As a quick illustration of the latter, consider the development of 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

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

say that innovation is being democratized, I mean that users of products and services-both firms and individual consumers-are increasingly able to innovate for themselves. User-centered innovation processes offer great advantages over the manufacturer-centric innovation

individual users do not have to develop everything they need on their own: they can benefit from innovations developed

much process innovation by manufacturers occurs on the factory floor as they produce

When I say that innovation is being democratized, I mean that users of products and services-both firms and individual consumers-are increasingly able to innovate for themselves. User-centered innovation processes offer great advantages over the manufacturer-centric innovation development systems that have been the mainstay of commerce for hundreds of years. Users that innovate can develop exactly what they want

Second, lead users are a much broader category than customers of a specific firm, and many have incentives that differ from those of customers. Lead users generating innovations of interest to manufacturers can reside, as we have seen, at the leading edges of target markets, and also in advanced analog markets. The innovations that some of these develop are certainly disruptive from the viewpoint of some manufacturers—

have been found to be highly correlated

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

Users and manufacturers can apply the insights developed in this book to improve their innovation processes. In this chapter, I illustrate by showing how firms can profit by systematically searching for innovations developed

many libraries now have in-house programming expertise. Computerized search methods for libraries were initially developed by advanced and technically sophisticated user institutions. Development began in the United States in the 1970s with work by

so. In contrast, the custom manufacturer wants to lower its

judged to be commercially attractive and/or have actually been

A small model of the innovate-or-buy decision follows.

When information is sticky, innovators tend to rely largely on information they already have in stock.

Empirical studies show that many users—from 10 percent to nearly 40 percent—engage in developing or modifying products. About half of these studies do not determine representative innovation frequencies; they were designed for other purposes. Nonetheless, when taken together, the findings make it very clear that users are doing a lot of product modification and product development in many fields.

directed by some amount of insight as to the direction in which a solution might lie (Baron 1988). Trial and error has also been found to be prominent in the problem-solving work of product and process development (Marples 1961; Allen 1966; von Hippel and Tyre 1995; Thomke 1998, 2003). Trial-and-error problem solving can be envisioned as a four-phase cycle that is typically repeated many