Shifting Innovation to Users via Toolkits
Name
mnsc.48.7.821.2817.pdf
Size
234.28 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7cdd319660fe17d36e8adaff670def56
Author(s)
von Hippel, Eric A
Katz, Ralph
Date Issued
July 2002
Journal
Management Science
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Citation
von Hippel, Eric and Ralph Katz. "Shifting Innovation to Users via Toolkits." Management Science 48, 7 (July 2002): 821-953 © 2002 INFORMS
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In the traditional new product development process, manufacturers first explore user needs and then develop responsive products. Developing an accurate understanding of a user need is not simple or fast or cheap, however. As a result, the traditional approach is coming under increasing strain as user needs change more rapidly, and as firms increasingly seek to serve “markets of one." Toolkits for user innovation is an emerging alternative approach in which manufacturers actually abandon the attempt to understand user needs in detail in favor of transferring need-related aspects of product and service development to users. Experience in fields where the toolkit approach has been pioneered show custom products being developed much more quickly and at a lower cost. In this paper we explore toolkits for user innovation and explain why and how they work.
Description
Another version of this paper is available in the Sloan Working Papers collection at https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/695.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.48.7.821.2817
