User Innovation Theory Research Articles

Web3 toolkits: A user innovation theory of crypto development

The development of Web3 — a stack of decentralised technologies underpinned by blockchains — isn’t simply a technical or financing challenge, it is also a problem of innovation and entrepreneurial discovery. In this paper we apply the lens of user innovation toolkit theory to the development of Web3. Toolkits are an organizational design solution to an innovation problem with sticky and local information. Our aim is to explore how toolkits theory applies to Web3 innovation, proposing that Web3 innovation is being organized through toolkits (e.g., blockchains, token standards, DAO frameworks) that enable efficient organization of sticky information to facilitate innovation. The contribution of this paper is the first application of toolkits theory to Web3, reframing its development as a problem of entrepreneurship and innovation in the context of distributed information. We provide implications for the role of developers as user innovators, the economic problem of emergent toolkit stacking, and the design of toolkit business models.

Robots and firm innovation: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing

Automation technology-driven innovation, as a key component of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, has significantly increased in recent years with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and robots. This paper aims at investigating robots as an unconventional source of innovation and a driver of desirable outcomes such as sustainability. We study unconventional innovation with the adoption of robots through the lens of user innovation theory and carry out a series of empirical analyses by compiling a unique dataset containing firm characteristics, patent applications, and robot stock in Chinese manufacturing. The regression results show a positive and significant relationship between robots and firm innovation. We also find that robots drive firm sustainable innovation measured as patents that are related to environmental innovation. Lastly, we empirically analyze several mediating mechanisms of robots as the unconventional source of innovation through the factor-augmenting technology effect, substitution effect, and absorptive capacity effect.

How Design Technology Improves the Sustainability of Intangible Cultural Heritage Products: A Practical Study on Bamboo Basketry Craft

The sustainability problem of many intangible cultural heritage (ICH) products stems from the shrinking of the core practitioner group, which is also the case for bamboo basketry craft. We believe that the problem in bamboo basketry originated in the lack of labor division between design and manufacturing, which prevents professional designers from entering this industry and results in the absence of several key stakeholders related to innovation and R&D. The lack of labor division is due to the technical difficulties associated with expressing the design concepts. The complexity of basket weaving structures makes it difficult to communicate between designer and manufacturer without precise expression tools, thus binding design and manufacturing into an integrated role. Guided by the user innovation theory, our team studied the design technology of bamboo basketry and developed a series of aiding tools, including the modeling of basic over–under structures and free weaving structures, automatic mapping techniques from 2D to 3D and several frequently used weaving skills, such as connecting, wrapping, plaiting and knotting. This technology enables designers to quickly design and express weaving structures with full details in digital models rather than to make samples. The application of the software shows that the technology considerably improved the designer interest and confidence. This technical solution makes designers, rather than programmers, able to do the development work, which also helps to create a sustainable ecological environment of technological research, also avoiding the difficulties associated with attracting business investment for such niche demands in the starting stage. Our practice shows that the sustainability of ICH products and the sustainability of the industry are closely related and that solving the latter supports the former.

The uneven role of users in service innovation performance

ABSTRACT This paper provides a conceptual and empirical framework for analyzing the role of users in innovation and performance at the firm level in the service sector. The theoretical model builds on the user innovation theory in services and proposes to distinguish between different modes and degrees of user participation that may perform differently. The empirical testing is based on a unique dataset from Finland. Results show that not all user engagement led to similar impacts: more active roles versus passive ones have a significant positive relationship with innovation output, but only specific combinations of user orientation and its intensity matter. Besides, no direct significant impacts from user orientation on productivity were found. As a managerial implication, service companies may approach users as co-innovation partners oriented to service quality and customer satisfaction rather than oriented to increase business efficiency.

Quo Vadis, open and user innovation theory?

Quo Vadis, open and user innovation theory?

How a user innovation origin affects firms’ subsequent innovation performance: the case of Japan’s fishing tackle industry

ABSTRACTIn user innovation theory, a user-founded firm is based on a product that was originally developed by a user for the user’s private need. In this study, we refer to the start-up characteristic of user-founded firms as the firms’ user innovation origin. We developed hypotheses to shed some initial light on the question of how a user innovation origin affects a firm’s subsequent innovation. Using survey data and expert ratings of 62 small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in the fishing tackle industry, we found several interesting relationships. First, a firm’s user innovation origin strengthens the current owner–manager’s intention to use the class of products produced by the firm and its competitors. This motivation in turn predicts the owner–manager’s product usage behaviour, which directly increases the firm’s frequency of introducing new products. We provide theoretical explanations for this serial multiple mediator model and also discuss their implications and limitations.

A Next Generation Assets-Based Public Health Intervention Development Model: The Public as Innovators.

In the public health field, the design of interventions has long been considered to be the province of public health experts. In this paper, I explore an important complement to the traditional model: the design, prototyping, and implementation of innovative public health interventions by the public (users) themselves. These user interventions can then be incorporated by public health experts, who in turn design, support, and implement improvements and diffusion strategies as appropriate for the broader community. The context and support for this proposed new public health intervention development model builds upon user innovation theory, which has only recently begun to be applied to research and practice in medicine and provides a completely novel approach in the field of public health. User innovation is an assets-based model in which end users of a product, process, or service are the locus of innovation and often more likely than producers to develop the first prototypes of new approaches to problems facing them. This occurs because users often possess essential context-specific information about their needs paired with the motivation that comes from directly benefiting from any solutions they create. Product producers in a wide range of fields have, in turn, learned to profit from the strengths of these user innovators by supporting their grass-roots, leading-edge designs and field experiments in various ways. I explore the promise of integrating user-designed and prototyped health interventions into a new assets-based public health intervention development model. In this exploration, a wide range of lead user methods and positive deviance studies provide examples for identification of user innovation in populations, community platforms, and healthcare programs. I also propose action-oriented and assets-based next steps for user-centered public health research and practice to implement this new model. This approach will enable us to call upon the strengths of the communities we serve as we develop new methods and approaches to more efficiently and effectively intervene on the varied complex health problems they face.

User Innovation as a Basis of Innovation Network Between Universities and Business

The paper aims at building a conceptual framework on how user innovation concept may be employed for the idea of creating innovation network between universities and business. Such innovation network would serve different purposes that are currently qualified as barriers for innovation management in business organizations as lack of easy access to lead-user innovators; difficulties in building minimal viable products; problems in validating innovation in its pre-market phase, etc. On the other hand, such innovation network would also satisfy some identified problems in innovation management education like reducing the gap between theory and business; teaching students through real live projects, etc. The approach for designing the conceptual framework steps on the user innovation theory. A literature analysis on user innovation identifies the utility of utilizing users in innovation development. Based on these, a focus group with 15 innovation managers qualitatively validates whether the identified 26 user activities in innovation development from prior researches would be beneficial if students take the role of user innovators (educated user innovators). The conceptual framework is built as a result from the respondents’ answers by designing where students may participate in innovation development as user innovators and how beneficial it is expected to be that cooperation. The assessment aims also at define the best place where the proposed activities may take place within the innovation development process. The finding of the study may play the role of a roadmap for user utilization in innovation development.

Expanding the scope of application of user innovation theory—A case study of the civil-military integration project in China

The focus of scholars studying user innovation has been restricted to the interaction between companies and individual users, and how companies can unilaterally exploit values from the value chain between companies and users. We argue that the value chain between the user and manufacturer should be a bilateral value chain in which both the user and manufacturer can conduct their own innovations and provide greater value to the whole value chain. In this paper, using examples from China's civil-military integration project, we took a step forward to apply the user innovation theory in the explanation of inter-sector technological value transfer. The main theoretical contribution of this paper is the expansion of the scope of application of the user innovation theory to inter-sector level research. Studying cases from China's civil-military integration project, we found that the concepts of user and innovator become blurred when we study the phenomenon across time. When we go beyond individual user and manufacturer and shift the focus of our discussion to the level of inter-sector technological value transfer, we will find that it is possible for organizational agents at large to be both users and innovators of technology.

User Service Innovation on Mobile Phone Platforms: Investigating Impacts of Lead Userness, Toolkit Support, and Design Autonomy

User participation is increasingly being seen as a way to mitigate the challenges that firms face in innovation, such as high costs and uncertainty of customer acceptance of their innovations. Thus, firms are establishing online platforms to support users in innovating services, such as iOS and Android platforms for mobile data service (MDS) innovation. Mobile phone platforms are characterized by technology (toolkits) and policy (rules) components that could influence user’s innovation. Additionally, attributes of user innovators (lead userness) are expected to drive their innovation behavior. Yet it is unclear how these characteristics jointly impact users’ service innovation outcomes. To address this knowledge gap, we propose a model that builds on user innovation theory and the work design literature to explain the influences of lead userness, design autonomy, toolkit support, and their interactions on user’s innovation outcomes (innovation quantity) on these platforms. We conceptualize toolkit support in terms of two constructs (i.e., ease of effort and exploration), and design autonomy in terms of three constructs (i.e., decision-making autonomy, scheduling autonomy, and work-method autonomy). The model was tested using survey and archival data from two dominant mobile phone platforms (i.e., iOS and Android). As hypothesized, lead userness, exploration through toolkits, and ease of effort through toolkits positively affect users’ innovation quantity. Additionally, decision-making autonomy and work-method autonomy influence innovation quantity, but scheduling autonomy does not. Further, the proposed three-way interactions between lead userness, toolkit support, and design autonomy constructs on users’ quantity of MDS innovation are largely supported. The findings enhance our understanding of user innovation on mobile phone platforms.

How crowdfunding platforms change the nature of user innovation – from problem solving to entrepreneurship

Crowdfunding has become a key research trend in recent years providing a new form of acquiring funding for innovation projects from users prior to the realization of the product in a ‘market before the market’. In this paper, we link the concept of crowdfunding with the user innovation phenomenon and show how user innovators harness crowdfunding to complement their innovative behavior and obtain funding to build firms and produce products in a more professional way. Conducting three case studies ranging from low- to high-tech crowdfunding campaigns, we investigate how crowdfunding impacts constituent dimensions of user innovation theory such as user motivation, user role, user community, collaboration between users and user investments. In particular, we argue that crowdfunding platforms (CFPs) may give rise to a more widespread occurrence of user entrepreneurs, who found a firm to commercialize their product or service in a marketplace they have created for their own need. Hence, we show the development from traditional user innovation to crowdfunding-enabled user innovation, which democratizes not only the creation but also the more large-scale commercialization of new products and services.

Motivations of application developers: Innovation, business model choice, release policy, and success

ABSTRACTThis study provides insights into the success of smartphone applications (apps) based on the chosen business model and version release strategy, and relates these variables to the motivations of their third-party innovators in the smartphone operating system market. The analysis is based on a questionnaire focusing on motivational factors and demographics of developers, coupled with secondary data on the apps themselves and their success. We find that apps developed due to the personal needs of the developer for new functionalities result in higher success in terms of number of downloads, whereas many of the intrinsic motivations outlined in user innovation theory do not have a significant impact on app success. Our findings imply that while some insights from user innovation theory are applicable to understanding factors that contribute to the potential success of apps, the smartphone application software ecosystem has its own dynamics, including the absence of learning effects over several apps that require further focus and more in-depth research.

S.16.07 - A key role of astrocytic lactate in the formation and maintenance of memories associated with cocaine-associated cues

The recent turn in research, technology and innovation (RTI) policy towards challenge-led strategies is posing new demands to Foresight methodology. RTI Foresight practitioners need to complement their well developed set of technology oriented methods with equally sophisticated approaches tackling societal aspects of innovation. In this paper we aim to make a contribution to this requirement. Building on user innovation theory we argue that demand oriented RTI Foresight needs to systematically integrate voices and hypotheses from the fringes of the innovation system. In order to develop a sound approach for this we set out from well established Foresight theory on “weak signals” and “cognitive biases”. Adopting a constructivist stance towards such signals leads us to the need to set up a socially robust, diverse discourse on “seeds of change hypotheses”. We then outline a practical implementation of such a discourse in the context of the recent Foresight process of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany. We describe and discuss the experience of this Foresight process and suggest avenues for further development of the approach.

Small seeds for grand challenges—Exploring disregarded seeds of change in a foresight process for RTI policy

The recent turn in research, technology and innovation (RTI) policy towards challenge-led strategies is posing new demands to Foresight methodology. RTI Foresight practitioners need to complement their well developed set of technology oriented methods with equally sophisticated approaches tackling societal aspects of innovation. In this paper we aim to make a contribution to this requirement. Building on user innovation theory we argue that demand oriented RTI Foresight needs to systematically integrate voices and hypotheses from the fringes of the innovation system. In order to develop a sound approach for this we set out from well established Foresight theory on “weak signals” and “cognitive biases”. Adopting a constructivist stance towards such signals leads us to the need to set up a socially robust, diverse discourse on “seeds of change hypotheses”. We then outline a practical implementation of such a discourse in the context of the recent Foresight process of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany. We describe and discuss the experience of this Foresight process and suggest avenues for further development of the approach.

Comparing Potential and Actual Innovators: An Empirical Study of Mobile Data Services Innovation

Firms are increasingly opening up their innovation efforts to allow users to tap into the benefits they can offer, such as mobile data service (MDS) innovation on iOS and Google Android platforms. For this purpose, platforms typically provide toolkits to facilitate user participation, aiming to create an ecosystem for sustainable innovation. However, with the barriers to user innovation and attrition of existing innovators, it could be challenging for firms to attract and sustain users' MDS innovation. With the possible benefits from user innovation, and considering the challenges faced, firms need to understand how to influence potential user innovators to take part and to encourage extant user innovators to innovate again. However, there is a lack of comprehensive research and understanding of what drives users' intentions to innovate services and the differences in the antecedents of such intention between potential and actual user innovators. Further, although prior studies have suggested that toolkits can support user innovation, little research has theorized and empirically tested their influence. Motivated thus, this study proposes a model based on (1) user innovation theory to explain the antecedents (including toolkit support) of user MDS innovation intention and (2) construal level theory to explain the differential effects of the antecedents for actual and potential user innovators. We tested the model through survey data from potential and actual MDS user innovators on Google Android and iOS platforms. We find that trend leadership and anticipated extrinsic reward influence both potential and actual user innovators' intentions to innovate. However, anticipated recognition and toolkit support affect only actual user innovators, while anticipated enjoyment affects only potential user innovators. Interestingly, toolkit support strengthens the influence of anticipated enjoyment for actual user innovators but weakens its influence for potential user innovators. Further, potential user innovators value anticipated extrinsic rewards less than actual innovators do. The implications for research and practice are discussed.