User Community vs. Producer Innovation Development Efficiency: A First Empirical Study

In this paper we report upon a first empirical exploration of the relative efficiency of innovation development by product users vs. product producers. In a study of over 50 years of product innovation in the whitewater kayaking field, we find users in aggregate were approximately 3× more efficient at developing important kayaking product innovations than were producers in aggregate. We speculate that this result is driven by what we term “efficiencies of scope” in problem-solving. These can favor an aggregation of many user innovators, each spending a little, over fewer producer innovators benefitting from higher economies of scale in product development. We also note that the present study explores only one initial point on what is likely to be a complex efficiency landscape.

[1]  T. J. Allen,et al.  Positive and Negative Biasing Sets: The Effects of Prior Experience on Research Performance , 2015 .

[2]  J. Larson,et al.  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations , 2015 .

[3]  E. Hippel,et al.  Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom , 2012 .

[4]  E. Hippel,et al.  The Age of the Consumer-Innovator , 2011 .

[5]  Visualizing Invisible Innovation Continent: Evidence from Global Consumer Innovation Surveys , 2011 .

[6]  F. Gault,et al.  User Innovation and the Market , 2011 .

[7]  Carliss Y. Baldwin,et al.  Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation , 2010, Organ. Sci..

[8]  E. von Hippel,et al.  Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the UK , 2010 .

[9]  Karim R. Lakhani,et al.  Marginality and Problem-Solving Effectiveness in Broadcast Search , 2010, Organ. Sci..

[10]  E. Hippel,et al.  Measuring User Innovation in the UK: the importance of product creation by users , 2010 .

[11]  Charles C. Persinger,et al.  How to improve R&D productivity: the pharmaceutical industry's grand challenge , 2010, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

[12]  Cornelius Herstatt,et al.  The Dynamics Of User Innovation: Drivers And Impediments Of Innovation Activities , 2008 .

[13]  Jock Given,et al.  The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom , 2007, Inf. Econ. Policy.

[14]  Christoph Hienerth.  The Commercialization of User Innovations: The Development of the Rodeo Kayak Industry , 2006 .

[15]  Carliss Y. Baldwin,et al.  How User Innovations Become Commercial Products: A Theoretical Investigation and Case Study , 2006 .

[16]  John Cullen,et al.  Democratizing Innovation , 2020, Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

[17]  Cornelius Herstatt,et al.  The process of user-innovation: a case study in a consumer goods setting , 2005 .

[18]  Cornelius Herstatt,et al.  User-innovators and "local" information: The case of mountain biking , 2005 .

[19]  Eric von Hippel,et al.  Finding Commercially Attractive User Innovations: A Test of Lead User Theory , 2005 .

[20]  D. Third.  OECD/Eurostat . Oslo Manual-Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Technological Innovation Paris, France: , 2005 .

[21]  C. Bloch,et al.  Oslo Manual - Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data, 3rd edition: Proposed Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data , 2005 .

[22]  Sonali K. Shah,et al.  How Communities Support Innovative Activities: An Exploration of Assistance and Sharing Among End-Users , 2003 .

[23]  Nile W. Hatch,et al.  Design Rules, Volume 1: The Power of Modularity , 2001 .

[24]  Sonali Shah.  Sources and Patterns of Innovation in a Consumer Products Field: Innovations in Sporting Equipment , 2000 .

[25]  Eric S. Raymond,et al.  The cathedral and the bazaar - musings on Linux and Open Source by an accidental revolutionary , 2001 .

[26]  H. Simon,et al.  Expert chess memory: revisiting the chunking hypothesis. , 1998, Memory.

[27]  William M. Riggs,et al.  Incentives to innovate and the sources of innovation: the case of scientific instruments☆ , 1994 .

[28]  W. Rogerson.  Overhead Allocation and Incentives for Cost Minimization in Defense Procurement , 1994 .

[29]  William M. Riggs,et al.  The impact of scientific and commercial values on the sources of scientific instrument innovation , 1992 .

[30]  H. Simon,et al.  Perception in chess , 1973 .

[31]  George J. Stigler,et al.  The Organization of Industry , 1969 .

[32]  M. Scheerer,et al.  Problem Solving , 1967, Nature.

[33]  R. Adamson,et al.  Functional fixedness as related to elapsed time and to set. , 1954, Journal of experimental psychology.

[34]  R. Adamson.  Functional fixedness as related to problem solving; a repetition of three experiments. , 1952, Journal of experimental psychology.

[35]  H. Birch,et al.  The negative effect of previous experience on productive thinking. , 1951, Journal of experimental psychology.

[36]  A. Luchins.  Mechanization in problem solving: The effect of Einstellung. , 1942 .