Today’s New York Times has a worthwhile article about the sources of innovation: Innovation Moves From the Laboratory to the Bike Trail and the Kitchen:
In order for companies to generate new ideas, Professor von Hippel urges them to pay more attention to “lead users” like these biking enthusiasts: people who stretch the limits of a technology and create their own innovative prototypes.
In a study at 3M, he and several colleagues found that product ideas from lead users generated eight times the sales of ideas generated internally – $146 million versus $18 million a year – in part because lead users were more likely to come up with ideas for entire new product lines rather than minor improvements.
The definition of “lead users” can become a bit circular, identifying anyone who innovates as a “lead user.” But in some fields, it is not hard to spot the people whose need to lower costs or enhance performance is particularly great.
“The Disney animators or Pixar animators are ahead on video editing tools from the ordinary consumer,” Professor von Hippel said. “Yet we know the stuff that these guys develop now ends up migrating downstream to the general people over time.”
If you’ve read the intro to the Radar blog, this theme will be familiar. I haven’t read von Hippel’s book, “Democratizing Innovation,” and I’m interested to read more of what he has to say. The article makes reference to open source, but a lot of the examples seem pretty “closed” to me.