I find this discussion of the different streams of...

2007-05-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

I find this discussion of the different streams of literature and their relationships very useful and important. In my opinion, there is a lot of value in drawing on these various field to explain certain phenomena, both theoretically and empirically. In fact, I would even argue that there is a lot more literature out there that could be helpful in explaining open innovation and user innovation. And not to forget, such research could also strengthen those other streams of research if there are also able to make sense of user/open innovation.

At the EURAM 2007, I presented a paper in which my co-authors (Allan Afuah and Bettina Bastian) and I make an effort to tie this idea of users as innovators to the broader literature on organization and innovation. In short, the idea is that manufacturers and users are often likely to conduct local rather than universal or global searches for knowledge they need in order to innovate to solve the users' needs (due to their cognitive and organizational constraints and path dependencies). A second dimension that we identify in our framework is the tacitness of knowledge that gives rise to difficulties in transferring knowledge between users and manufacturer (if they can locate it in the first place). While our framework uses some of the existing explanations of Eric von Hippel about user innovation (e.g., the sticky information argument), we think that such a framework can be useful to both extend this literature and explore its relevance to a wider stream of research. For instance, we think that manufacturers' existing capabilities and incentives to invest in innovating for users can hamper the development of "radical" innovations and thus make it more likely that users innovate by themselves in such occasions.

While Joel West’s keynote set the stage for a very interesting conference with valuable and constructive discussions, the conclusions of Karim Lakhani’s keynote also provided some food for thought and thus future research. He presented some conclusions as well as starting points that can help researcher in the field of open (source) and user innovation to develop the field and make sense of what they observe. He for example also referred to this idea of local search, which is often problematic as knowledge is dispersed in the economy (as already indicated in Hayek’s 1945 article in The American Economic Review). In any case, it is clear that there are still many important questions unanswered but that there are important hints for where to look for some of the answers. Let's just hope that our own cognitive limitations as researchers don't lead us to search too locally and ignore other potentially useful research.

Marcel Bogers
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
(Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)

Comments on Open Innovation: Cumulative, open and user innovation

I find this discussion of the different streams of...