Users as Innovators and Entrepreneurs in the Context of Sustainable Development

Users as Innovators and Entrepreneurs

in the context of

Sustainable Development

Introduction

Users as innovators was ranked among the top eight emerging trends by McKinsey (Manyika, Roberts & Sprague 2008). According to a research conducted in 2010, 8 % of UK consumers have created a product that they use in order to better serve their needs. This trend, involving users deep in the innovation and entrepreneurial process, is part of a larger movement that changes the role of consumers in the market: they are initiators and increasingly independent from traditional structures. With growing availability of knowledge, tools and individual capabilities, this trend is likely to keep growing and develop into new areas (Nielsen, Reisch & Thøgersen, 2014). As consumers become increasingly aware of social and environmental issues, they also lead the market towards sustainable development, through their role as early adopters of sustainable products and services and as sustainable innovators, creating solutions to meet their needs while promoting sustainability along the value chain. In this essay, I will explore the role of users as innovators and entrepreneurs in the context of sustainable development, as well as its implication on the market and its participants.

About Innovative Users

Innovation is “providing organizational and technical improvements that can be sold successfully in the marketplace”. The role of users in the innovative process has been a subject of research since the early 1970s (Bogers, Afuah & Bastian, 2010). Through the process of trial and error, users are often the source of low cost innovations, tailored to meet their needs, while helping reduce information asymmetries and increasing the efficiency of the innovation process. Von Hippel (1986) named these innovators Lead Users: users who face needs that mainstream users will only face months or even years later, and that expect to benefit significantly from solving them earlier. While in the traditional innovation process the manufacturer is responsible for the development and production of a good or service, the trend of users as innovators turns upside down the traditional innovation model, from top-down to bottom-up as shown in Figure 1 (von Hippel 1988).

[pic 1]

FIGURE 1. The Development of innovation in the traditional process vs. user innovation.

The trend of users as innovators can be seen as part of a larger movement in which consumers become more active in areas that influence their lives and assume the role traditionally held by the manufacturer. In this new model, users themselves recognize needs and assemble resources to meet them. Often, they also tend to be involved in the application and commercialization stage. This model is finding increasing acceptance in industries such as software development, where users program and develop applications, or in the furniture industry, where as part of the “open design” approach final products are designed by users and produced by the manufacturer.