To solve a problem, needed information and problem-solving capabilities must be brought together. Often the information used in technical problem solving is costly to acquire, transfer, and use in a new location — is, in our terms, "sticky." In this paper we explore the impact of information...

A central tenant of open innovation is free revealing of the detailed workings of novel products and services, so that others may use them, learn from them, and perhaps improve them as well. We explain that innovators frequently do freely reveal proprietary information and knowledge regarding...

Household innovation is the development of functionally novel products, processes, or other applications by consumers. These are developed in discretionary time without payment. Household innovation is widely present in all economies, but not yet in official statistics. In this chapter we...

In a first survey of its type, we measure development and modification of consumer products by product users in a representative sample of 1,173 UK consumers aged 18 and over. We estimate this previously unmeasured type of innovation to be quite large: 6.1% of UK consumers – nearly 2.9 million...

Despite recent interest in measuring household activities, investment in household R&D (or household innovation), has not been considered in any of the literatures on national-accounts-style measurement. Household R&D is the dedication of household resources to creating a product or process that...

It has long been assumed that product innovations are typically developed by product manufacturers. Because this assumption deals with the basic matter of who the innovator is, it has inevitably had a major impact on innovation-related research, on firms' management of research and development,...

Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users - both individuals and firms - often freely share their innovations with others, creating...

Informal innovation has been investigated in numerous countries, but its incidence in developing countries, and relationship with informal business development, has been unexplored. This study explores 1. the nature of informal innovation in a developing country (South Africa), 2. its...

Innovation development, production, distribution and consumption networks can be built up horizontally – with actors consisting only of innovation users (more precisely, "user/self-manufacturers"). Some open source software projects are examples of such networks, and examples can be found in...

This research identifies a surprising downside of crowdsourcing: Those participants whose ideas are not selected disengage from the brand after having learned about the outcome. From this perspective, crowdsourcing might better be framed as a communal effort rather than a competition.