Innovation has traditionally been seen as the province of producers. However, theoretical and empirical research now shows that individual users – consumers – are also a major and increasingly important source of new product and service designs. In this paper, we build a microeconomic model...

Many services can be self-provided. An individual user or a user firm can, for example, choose to do its own accounting – choose to self-provide that service - instead of hiring an accounting firm to provide it. Since users can ‘serve themselves’ in many cases, it is also possible for...

A detailed survey of 498 high technology small and medium-sized enterprises in the Netherlands shows process innovation by user firms to be common practice. Fifty-four percent of these firms reported developing entirely novel process equipment or software for their own use and/or modifying...

The impact of user innovation on social welfare isanalyzed by comparing user innovators to manufacturer innovators in terms oftheir innovation incentives and knowledge.Following a review of theliterature on product development by users, it is argued that the introductionof user innovation in a...

Presents a series of studies showing that the sources of innovation vary greatly; possible sources include innovation users, suppliers of innovation-related components, and product manufacturers. These types of roles are known as functional areas. Specific areas of innovation are marked by...

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...

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 the...