Users as innovators? Exploring the limitations of user-driven innovation

Paul Trott, Patrick Van Der Duin, Dap Hartmann
2013 Prometheus  
Considering users as innovators has gained considerable support over the past thirty years. Eric von Hippel's work in this area (1976; 1988) forms a significant part of the theoretical underpinning and evidence behind this concept. Many further studies have been undertaken to support it (e.g., Urban and von Hippel, 1988; Shah, 1999) . It has contributed to our understanding of innovation management in general and new product development in particular. Even so, Luthje and Herstatt, (2004)
more » ... se that ‗empirical findings are scarce' and the most radical innovations of the last 25 years were not developed by users. Thus, in this paper we critically review the lead-user theory and focus on three specific areas of weakness of the lead-user concept (conceptual, methodological, empirical), and argue that improvement in these areas would considerably strengthen its standing. We conclude that although lead-users can contribute to the innovation process, this contribution should not be over stated and that insufficient attention has been paid to the limitations of this theory. , new product development. the most important innovations of the last 25 years (such as the Internet, the cell phone, and the personal computer) shows that the user involvement was quite low. In Section 3 we elaborate this issue. Recently, Schreier and Prül (2008) even argued for extending the leaduser concept beyond idea generation to more general issues in the marketing of new products. Although, Bogers et al., (2010) have recently put forward a review and critique of users as innovators, they are merely looking for theoretical holes in order to fill these and thereby strengthen the theory. We offer a wider appraisal thereby attempting to address this gap in the literature on lead users. This paper deals with the question what are the limitations of the lead-user school. This question has arisen following our recent experiences of working with start-up firms at Technical Universities in the Netherlands. Many of these start-up firms involved advanced technology applications developed initially at the university. Our views have been informed by our observations of these start-up firms engaging with potential users and customers. We identify three key areas of weakness of users as innovators and suggest that further improvements are needed of the theory. We will argue that although lead-users can contribute to the innovation process, this contribution has been over stated and that insufficient attention has been paid to the limitations of this approach. The issues raised in this paper generate clear innovation policy implications for the firm and for government officials involved in developing innovation policies. Both need to ensure that their search for Page 4 sources of innovation is not overly reliant on users; for curiosity driven research unfettered by the market will surely continue to provide a rich source of technological innovations. The following section summarizes the literature on lead users. Next we present three points of criticism on the lead user school and we end this article with the implication of our criticism for how companies should deal with users as source for innovation and for governmental innovation policy. Users as innovators: an overview Benoit Godin has written extensively on the intellectual history of innovation. This helps us place users as innovators within the innovation literature. His work provides a detailed account of the development of the category of innovation. In his two papers -Innovation Studies: The development of a speciality I and II‖ (Godin, 2010a; 2010b) he explains how two traditions emerged. The first in the USA was concerned with technological change as the use of inventions in industrial production and the second in Europe which was concerned more specifically with commercialised invention. The European tradition which was developed as late as the 1970s restricted the previously broader definition of innovation as the introduction of change to a narrower focus on technology and commercialisation. Christopher Freeman is largely credited as responsible for this so called European tradition which shifted the focus of studies of innovation to the process from invention to diffusion and the consideration of policy issues specifically economic growth. The idea of a professionalised R&D system was proposed as having a key role. According to Godin this is now the position adopted by many public organisations including the OECD. Godin argues that Freeman transformed an old meaning of technological innovation; that of introducing technical change within firms, to commercialising technological invention and so helped build a new tradition. The European tradition saw invention as part of the innovation process and introduced the function of market uncertainty. This begins to shift the focus to product development and the role of users in the testing of such products. In addition, Godin identified another rationale that Freeman put forward for wanting to include users of the technology. This was: ‗Freeman believed that there is a failure in the market mechanism in relation to technical change in consumer goods and services' (Godin, 2010b:26). Godin concludes by suggesting somewhat mischievously that the two different traditions have emerged on different continents and continue to exist in almost total ignorance of each other. This helps to explain the emergence of different views on how to delineate innovation.
doi:10.1080/08109028.2013.818790 fatcat:mtot2coccvdvveazcpfxu2fzxi