THE DOMINANT ROLE OF "LOCAL" INFORMATION IN USER INNOVATION: THE CASE OF MOUNTAIN BIKING
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4377-02.pdf
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Author(s)
Luthje, Christian
Herstatt, Cornelius
von Hippel, Eric A.
Date Issued
January 27, 2003
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper;4377-02
Abstract
In a study of innovations developed by mountain bikers, we find that user-innovators
almost always utilize "local" information - information already in their possession or
generated by themselves - to assess the need for and to develop solutions for their
innovations. We argue that this finding fits the economic incentives operating on users.
Local need information is the most relevant to user-innovators, since the bulk of their
innovation-related rewards typically come from in-house use. Local solution
information that is already "in stock" is preferred because it can be applied to
innovation-related problem-solving at a relatively low cost. Our findings suggest that
innovation development is distributed among users in an economical way:
user-innovations tend to be developed by "low-cost providers." It also suggests that
the likely function and solution type employed in most user innovations can be
predicted on the basis of preexisting user activity patterns and stocks of
solution-related information. This in turn opens the way to new methods for efficiently
screening user populations for the presence of innovations of any specified type
Subjects
User Innovation
Local Information
Mountain Biking
Persistent DSpace Link
