Eric von Hippel Joins BIF Research Advisory Council

If you've been following my blog entries of late, you know that I'm a huge fan of Eric von Hippel. His guidance in recent weeks in helping me shape a BIF initiative driven by his lead-user innovation research has been invaluable. So I'm thrilled to announce that Eric has joined our Research Advisory Council. He joins an amazing cast of characters comprised of leading business executives, academic and consulting innovation thought leaders who are helping our BIF community shape our research initiatives as well as provide direction on the best practices and next practices that are most valuable for our members to understand.

Eric is a Professor and Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He specializes in research related to the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation.He also develops and teaches about practical methods that firms can use to improve their product and service development processes. Back in 2005, he published a book called Democratizing Innovation which looks closely at this emergent system of user-centered innovation.

Here's a definition of a lead-user:

Lead users are defined as users of a given product or service type that combine two characteristics: (1) lead users expect attractive innovation-related benefits from a solution to their needs and so are motivated to innovate, and (2) lead users experience needs that will become general in a marketplace, but experience them months or years earlier than the majority of the target market. Note that lead users are not the same as early adopters of an innovation. They are typically ahead of the entire adoption curve in that they experience needs before any responsive commercial products exist – and therefore often develop their own solutions.

Of course much of Eric’s research is based on lead-user product innovation. The question I'm delving into is this: What role can or should the lead user play when dealing with business model innovation? Here at BIF, we’re focused on systems change. Is there a way to give the lead user the tools necessary to innovate on a systems-wide level? Do the tools even exist today to do that?

I know that Eric's experience will be a tremendous benefit to our community and I'm jazzed about figuring out how Eric’s work can be applied to the work here at BIF. If anyone out there has evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, of lead-users affecting entire business models, I’d love to hear from you.

Related BIF Content
Building Lead-User Research into an Innovation Platform
Do Lead Users Have a Role In Business Model Innovation?

Other Related Content
Eric's website is chockfull of useful material pertaining to lead-user innovation. You can also download a copy of his book, Democratizing Innovation for free.

Posted January 30, 2008 08:54 AM by Chris Flanagan | Permalink