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July 26, 2006
User innovation in the rodeo kayak industry
If you enjoyed Eric von Hippel's discussion of innovation within the world of skateboarding at the Fortune Innovation Forum last winter, you'll enjoy this overview of user-driven innovation within the rodeo kayak industry. In order to understand how "user innovations" evolve and eventually become commercial products, Harvard Business School professor Carliss Baldwin, Christoph Hienerth and MIT Sloan professor Eric von Hippel analyzed the sport and industry of rodeo kayaking. In a follow-up Q&A with Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, Carliss Baldwin explains how user innovations become commercial products and describes the implications for entrepreneurs who would like to nurture a community of user-innovators:
"Baldwin and her fellow researchers wanted to better understand this path from user innovation to commercial product. What role do user communities play in this process? Are "user-manufacturers" —users who turn their improvements into commercial products—usually industry leaders? How competitive are existing, well-capitalized companies when they compete against user-manufacturers? Although there have been a number of studies on user innovation, little if any work has been done on the commercialization of user innovations... The research was recently published in the working paper How User Innovations Become Commercial Products: A Theoretical Investigation and Case Study."
Tags: user innovation innovation Carliss Baldwin Eric von Hippel
[image: HBS Working Knowledge]
Posted by dominic at July 26, 2006 7:20 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig
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