Market failure in the diffusion of consumer-developed innovations: Patterns in Finland
Author(s)
de Jong, Jeroen P.J.; von Hippel, Eric A.; Gault, Fred; Kuusisto, Jari; Raasch, Christina
Downloadvon Hippel_Market failure.pdf (404.5Kb)
PUBLISHER_CC
Publisher with Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Empirical studies have shown that millions of individual users develop new products and services to serve their own needs. The economic impact of this phenomenon increases if and as adopters in addition to the initial innovators also gain benefits from those user-developed innovations. It has been argued that the diffusion of user-developed innovations is negatively affected by a new type of market failure: value that others may gain from a user-developed product can often be an externality to consumer-developers. As a result, consumer innovators may not invest in supporting diffusion to the extent that would be socially optimal. In this paper, we utilize a broad sample of consumers in Finland to explore the extent to which innovations developed by individual users are deemed of potential value to others, and the extent to which they diffuse as a function of perceived general value. Our empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that a market failure is affecting the diffusion of user innovations developed by consumers for their own use. Implications and possible remedies are discussed.
Date issued
2015-08Department
Sloan School of ManagementJournal
Research Policy
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
De Jong, Jeroen P.J., Eric von Hippel, Fred Gault, Jari Kuusisto, and Christina Raasch. “Market Failure in the Diffusion of Consumer-Developed Innovations: Patterns in Finland.” Research Policy 44, no. 10 (December 2015): 1856–1865.
Version: Final published version
ISSN
00487333