User community vs. producer innovation development efficiency: A first empirical study
Name
Von Hippel_User community.pdf
Size
293.1 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9927a8c36d34ce30be58611af13be2e8
Author(s)
Hienerth, Christoph
von Hippel, Eric A.
Berg Jensen, Morten
Date Issued
August 2013
Journal
Research Policy
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Hienerth, Christoph; von Hippel, Eric and Berg Jensen, Morten. “User Community Vs. Producer Innovation Development Efficiency: A First Empirical Study.” Research Policy 43, no. 1 (February 2014): 190–201 © 2013 Elsevier B.V.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
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.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.07.010
