"According to innovation expert Eric von Hippel, users are often the first source of new products — and that has important implications for businesses."

On our first blog let's refer to the Sloan School of Buisness review article called "According to innovation expert Eric von Hippel, users are often the first source of new products — and that has important implications for businesses."

Von Hippel's main conclusion on his research made throughout the years is basically that product developers get all the credit - and actual users who helped develop the product do not get any credit at all. More in depth, Von Hippel argues that people develop their own ideas in order to achieve their own needs and then producers implement the users ideas to create new products that serve a wider range of costumers. One of the major argumentation of the trend that Von Hippel is trying to defend comes from a study made by Nikolaus Franke and Sonali Shah in which the main observation is that people tend to change sports rules in order to create a new sport that meet their own needs. This is also defended by Charles Leadbeater in his speech called "The era of open innovation".

Many companies have started to develop a big interaction with its costumers. One of the clearest examples is Lego. Lego developed a product named Lego Mindstorm in which young people are able to make their own robot. This has been one of the most important products of Lego in decades. This suggests that people are being attracted by products in which they have the power to design in order to satisfy their needs and likes. This was developed in Lego Cuuso which is one of the finest examples of user innovation.

We believe that this new trend of innovating might change the thought process in which companies deliver new products to the market. We should be ready to see companies involve end users more and more in their innovation processes. Lets continue to look at this trend as we believe it will get more and more important for companies in future years!