Lead User Analyses for the Development of New Industrial Products
Name
mnsc.34.5.569.pdf
Size
1.26 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2bb3c237afdff735248951849b068d00
Author(s)
Urban, Glen L
von Hippel, Eric A
Date Issued
May 1988
Journal
Management Science
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Citation
Urban, Glen L. and Eric von Hippel. "Lead User Analyses for the Development of New Industrial Products." Management Science 34, 5 (May 1998): 555-677 © 1988 INFORMS
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Recently, a “lead user” concept has been proposed for new product development in fields subject to rapid change (von Hippel [von Hippel, E. 1986. Lead users: A source of novel product concepts. Management Sci. 32 791–805.]). In this paper we integrate market research within this lead user methodology and report a test of it in the rapidly evolving field of computer-aided systems for the design of printed circuit boards (PC-CAD). In the test, lead users were successfully identified and proved to have unique and useful data regarding both new product needs and solutions responsive to those needs. New product concepts generated on the basis of lead user data were found to be strongly preferred by a representative sample of PC-CAD users. We discuss strengths and weaknesses of this first empirical test of the lead user methodology, and suggest directions for future research.
Description
Another version of this paper is available in the Sloan Working Papers collection at https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/2145.
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.34.5.569
