Sources of Innovation
Name
von Hippel Sources of Innovation.pdf
Size
43.2 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
1df7e845bda59f1efe87c71187f18823
Author(s)
von Hippel, Eric A.
Date Issued
1988
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
Von Hippel, Eric A. "The Sources of Innovation." Oxford University Press, 2016.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
It has long been assumed that product innovations are typically developed by product manufacturers. Because this assumption deals with the basic matter of who the innovator is, it has inevitably had a major impact on innovation-related research, on firms' management of research and development, and on government innovation policy. However, it now appears that this basic assumption is often wrong.
In this book I begin by presenting a series of studies showing that the sources of innovation vary greatly. In some fields, innovation users develop most innovations. In others, suppliers of innovation-related components and materials are the typical sources of innovation. In still other fields, conventional wisdom holds and product manufacturers are indeed the typical innovators. Next, I explore why this variation in the functional sources of innovation occurs and how it might be predicted. Finally, I propose and test some implications of replacing a manufacturer-as-innovator assumption with a view of the innovation process as predictably distributed across users, manufacturers, suppliers, and others.
Keywords: innovation, innovators, user innovation
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2877276
