Manufacturers customarily provide only a few product variants to address the average needs of users in the major segments of markets they serve. When user needs are highly heterogeneous, this approach leaves many seriously dissatisfied. One solution is to enable users to modify products on their...

Research into free and open source software development projects has so far largely focused on how the major tasks of software development are organized and motivated. But a complete project requires the execution of “mundane but necessary” tasks as well. In this paper, we explore how the...

Empirical studies have shown that millions of individual users develop new products and services to serve their own needs. The economic impact of this phenomenon increases if and as adopters in addition to the initial innovators also gain benefits from those user-developed innovations. It has...

In a study of innovations developed by mountain bikers, we find that user-innovators almost always utilize “local” information– information already in their possession or generated by themselves – both to determine the need for and to develop the solutions for their innovations. We argue...

In the traditional new product development process, manufacturers first explore user needs and then develop responsive products. Developing an accurate understanding of a user need is not simple or fast or cheap, however. As a result, the traditional approach is coming under increasing strain as...

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...