The PDMA Handbook of Innovation and New Product Development, 4th Edition

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN HARNESSING ORDINARY USERS’ IDEAS FOR INNOVATION

Peter R. Magnusson

Ordinary people just don’t comprehend.

– VAN MORRISON (SONG ORDINARY PEOPLE, 1998)

Many product/service developers consider ordinary people unable to contribute much when it comes to innovation. This chapter challenges that assumption – it is about how ordinary people, or more specifically ordinary users, can contribute to the front-end of innovation (FEI).

Many of us have heard about lead users and how they can contribute to great innovations. Lead user innovation was discovered and introduced by Eric von Hippel in the ’80s (von Hippel 1986). Lead users are either B2B users or consumers who have, and are aware of, needs that cannot be fulfilled by existing offerings. Most importantly, they are also able to come up with a solution to fulfill these needs and solve their problems. The Melitta coffee brewing filter, the Camelback, Liquid Paper, and the Windsurfing board are all examples of successful lead-user innovations.

However, there are also several difficulties linked to lead-user innovation, for instance, how to identify potential lead users. Whether a person is a lead user can be established first in retrospect. There is also a challenge with intellectual property rights, that is, obtaining ownership of lead users’ innovations. Many lead-user innovations have initiated startup companies ...