مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

Early works on user-innovation asked how industrial products could emerge out of customer ideas (von Hippel, 1978). Ever since, industryspecific studies showed that without user-innovation, eighteenth-century iron smelting (Allen, 1983), modern day mining (Nuvolari, 2004), advanced medical equipment (von Hippel and Finkelstein, 1979), semiconductor process equipment (Lim, 2000), library information systems (Morrison et al., 2000), embedded Linux software (Henkel, 2003), etc. would not have been possible. The importance of user-innovation has largely been argued through efficiency of product development (Hienerth et al., 2014) and benefits for national economies. Studies estimated the aggregate spending of user-innovators to be in the tens of billions of dollars annually (e.g., de Jong et al., 2015; Gambardella et al., 2015). Especially sports enthusiasts showed a very high willingness for spending time and money in their most favorite pass of time (Hienerth et al., 2011; Raasch et al., 2008).

To date, there is a number of studies focused largely on the demographics of user-innovators (e.g., Ogawa and Pongtanalert, 2011; von Hippel et al., 2012, 2011). Consequently, the list of countries in which studies on user-innovators have been conducted is increasing. Von Hippel et al. (2012) suggests a share of 6.1% of user-innovators among the UK’s consumer population, making eight innovations (creations and/or modifications) in three years’ time. NESTA identified that 8% of UK consumers create or modify one or more products.1 User-innovators in the US are estimated at 5.2% (Ogawa and Pongtanalert, 2011) and 5.4% in Finland (de Jong et al., 2015). Findings from Asia estimate the share of innovators lower, at 3.7% among users in Japan, or 1.5% in South Korea (Kim, 2015; Pongtanalert and Ogawa, 2015). The sample size of user innovators increases in special dedicated communities. Every fourth sport enthusiast was found to improve his or her equipment (see, for example, Franke and Shah, 2003 in four extreme sports; Lüthje et al., 2005 in mountain biking; Tietz et al., 2005 in kitesurfing, Raasch et al., 2008 on moth class sailing). The same enthusiasm was seen in other hobbyist communities, such as the Lego model building community (Antorini et al., 2012).

Another stream of research on user-innovators studied their motives (e.g. Stock, 2015). Especially for volunteer users, there is a drive to develop and improve their own skills (Hertel et al., 2003; Lakhani and Wolf, 2003; Lerner and Tirole, 2002; von Hippel and von Krogh, 2003). A new and emerging stream of literature now studied the personality traits of user-innovators (e.g. Stock et al., 2016). Although the findings are still rather rudimental, this field holds exciting opportunities for future research. A specific aspect of user-innovation studies paid great attention to the diffusion channels that user innovators choose to share with peers or to commercialize their findings (de Jong et al., 2015; Ogawa and Piller, 2006; von Hippel et al., 2012). The share of user-innovators that diffuse their innovation has been estimated to be low, at around 12% (de Jong et al., 2015; von Hippel et al., 2011, 2012). This has been related to possible entrepreneurial opportunities the innovators intended to pursue. Others suggested that personality characteristics also have an influence on knowledge sharing (Matzler et al., 2008).