User-Innovation

Barriers to Democratization and IP Licensing

Viktor Braun, Cornelius Herstatt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135255237
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Economic growth is highly dependent on technological progress and innovation, yet the sources from which these innovations originate are still largely misunderstood and untapped. Recent research has demonstrated that users, rather than manufacturers, are often a critical source of innovation in numerous fields from extreme sports to medical devices to software. This book systematically identifies the most important barriers to user-innovation and critically evaluates the democratization of innovation argument by critically assessing the main legal, economic, technological, and societal barriers to user-innovation for the first time and proposing alternative possibilities.

Through original research the author reveals the dynamics of user-innovation and offers strategies for minimizing those factors that inhibit and stifle the spread of this phenomenon. From this analysis it becomes clear that user-innovation has become more difficult over time and that the problem is now of how manufacturers can enable users to overcome the discussed barriers and simultaneously benefit from such consumer-driven activities. Arguing that licenses are not just an important technology commercialization instrument but are tools critical to generating innovations, the author explains how licenses can in certain situations be employed to help users overcome some of the barriers to user-innovation. User-Innovation: Barriers to Democratization and IP Lice nsing is a practical guidebook as well as a startlingly original work of scholarship that will be essential reading for years to come.

Notes

PART A

1. e.g. The introduction of the “Goal Camera” in Hockey or the “Hawk Eye” (cf. Sport1 2007) in Tennis, which both allow the exact verification by camera of whether the puck has crossed the goal line or whether the ball bounced within or outside of the line.

2. See Wagner and McDermott (2006) who discuss the commercialization of Christianity.

3. In the early 1800s for example the Luddites, English textile workers, unsuccessfully protested against the mechanization of their profession by destroying weaving machines. In the long run people’s current protests against gene technology are likely to be similarly futile.

4. UNFPA 2006, 2004

5. Jewkes et al. (1969; p. 25) explain that even the US courts have struggled to agree on a single definition of invention and innovation and instead have created “contradictions and confusions.”

6. Lüthje and Herstatt 2004, Veryzer 1998a

7. e.g. Lilien et al. 2002

8. von Hippel 1985

9. Herstatt 1991

10. Shaw 1985, von Hippel 1976

11. von Hippel 2005a, Rogers 2003

12. “Advances in information, manufacturing, and basic technology have accelerated so quickly that many processes and products now have lives of three months or less before they become obsolete” (D’Aveni 1994).

13. Chesbrough (2003; p. 35) explains the increasing importance of “learning by hiring away.”

14. D’Aveni 1994. “The value of an idea or a technology depends on its business model” (Chesbrough 2003; p. xxx).

15. Gupta and Wilemon 1996. Larry Huston, director of external innovation for Procter & Gamble (P&G), stated “inside P&G are more than 8,600 scientists advancing the industrial knowledge that enable new P&G offerings; outside are 1–5 million. So why try to invent everything internally?” (Chesbrough 2003; p. xxvii).

16. Chesbrough (2003) and Chesbrough and Kardon Crowther (2006) provide some empirical evidence of the open innovation paradigm in both high-tech and established industries.

17. Rice and Rogers 1980

18. von Hippel 1976

19. Lettl et al. 2006

20. Ramírez 1999

21. Kodama 1995

22. e.g. Nohr 2004

23. Lüthje and Herstatt 2004, Morrison et al. 2004

24. Nagel 1993

25. Tuomi 2006

26. Tuomi 2006, Rogers 2003, Kline and Pinch ...

Table of contents

• Routledge Studies in Innovation, Organization and Technology
• Contents
• Diagrams
• Tables
• Frequently Used Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part A The Democratization Potential
• Part B Barriers to Democratization
• Part C The Dynamics of User-Innovation
• Part D The Paradigm of Licensing to Innovate
• Appendix The Lead-User Method in the Medical Device Industry
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index