When Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, started to forge pitons (a piece of climbing equipment) in 1957, he never planned to become a businessman. All he wanted to do was produce climbing gear for his friends and himself. However, half a century later, his company Patagonia (now worth 3...

Prior research on user innovation has concentrated on markets in which products (e.g., mountain bikes, kitesurfing equipment, tools, etc.) are typically purchased by those users who modify them. However, in numerous markets, this is not the case, for example, those in which equipment is rented....

Neue Serviceangebote der Industrie sind im Gegensatz zu innovativen Produkten kaum Ergebnis eigener Forschung und Entwicklung (FuE). Sie werden bislang vielmehr fast ausschließlich aufbauend auf von Kunden artikulierten Bedarfen (demand pull) konzipiert. Federführend für neue Services ist...

While the user-innovation literature has considered firms as potential user-innovators, little is known about the individual contributions by employees of producer-firms, who innovate to address their own specific needs within their firm, and which we refer to as employee-users. We investigate...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of lead users (LUs) on innovation success by proposing and validating an integrative model that links LUs, innovation success and knowledge sharing (KS) variables. Design/methodology/approach - The authors research is quantitative in...