User toolkits for innovation - a literature review

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on the toolkits for user innovation approach. It identifies a sample of articles that employ toolkits for user innovation and closely related approaches to user involvement. The paper illustrates that the identified studies merely employ parts of the user toolkits for innovation attributes and that the users, who employ the most advanced toolkits, are primarily specialists, while the average users are only given access to rather simple toolkits. Furthermore, the paper shows that while the user toolkit for innovation approach represents a distinct theoretical position, the empirical evidence of the application of the approach is closer to other approaches within the user innovation paradigm like customisation. The paper concludes in some considerations for future research on the topic and some implications for practitioners.