User innovation in Internet businesses

This paper examines the concept of user innovation, how this concept has been applied to internet businesses, and behaviors and motivation of the users who have participated in user innovative activities for internet businesses. This thesis presents definitions and characteristics of both user innovation activities in web businesses. As a major research method, a survey is conducted to identify the trend and phenomenon of current user innovation activities on the web. Major discoveries from the web user innovation survey are two. First, most lead users who participate in user innovation activity in the web businesses do not significantly differ by gender, age, or profession. Second, most lead users participate in user innovation activities for social-networking purpose as well as the goal of contributing to society. User innovations are seldom oriented or initiated from financial benefit purpose as similar as many traditional user innovations are formed for non financial benefit reasons. Internet businesses can leverage these findings to bring a user innovation to their business more effectively.