			Home About us Contact

User Innovations (user + innovation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	80%

Selected Abstracts

USER INNOVATION AND CREATIVE CONSUMPTION IN JAPANESE CULTURE INDUSTRIES: THE CASE OF AKIHABARA, TOKYO

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2010
Jakob Nobuoka
ABSTRACT. The consumption and export of material and immaterial commodities based upon Japanese popular culture is rapidly growing and continually finds new fans all around the world. In this article, it is suggested that some of the competitiveness of these unique cultural phenomena can be traced to the very dense and vivid area of Akihabara in Tokyo. Its long history as an electronic retail district and a more recent influx of firms and shops focused on popular culture has created a strong place brand that continues to mark Akihabara as the capital of Japanese cultural industries. It is a space where different consumers, specialist subcultures and firms and their products can interact. The area functions as a hub were ideas and values are exchanged, tested and promoted. The article argues that research on innovation milieus must take account of the role of users and their relation to place. [source]

Finding Commercially Attractive User Innovations: A Test of Lead-User Theory,

THE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2006
Nikolaus Franke
Firms and governments are increasingly interested in learning to exploit the value of lead-user innovations for commercial advantage. Improvements to lead-user theory are needed to inform and to guide these efforts. The present study empirically tests and confirms the basic tenets of lead-user theory. It also uncovers some new refinements and related practical applications. Using a sample of users and user,innovators drawn from the extreme sport of kite surfing, an analysis was made of the relationship between the commercial attractiveness of innovations developed by users and the intensity of the lead-user characteristics those users display. A first empirical analysis is provided of the independent effects of its two key component variables. In the empirical study of user modifications to kite-surfing equipment, it was found that both components independently contribute to identifying commercially attractive user innovations. Component 1, the high expected-benefits dimension, predicts innovation likelihood, and component 2, the ahead of the trend dimension, predicts both the commercial attractiveness of a given set of user-developed innovations and innovation likelihood due to a newly proposed innovation supply side effect. It was concluded that the component variables in the lead-user definition are indeed independent dimensions, so neither can be dropped without loss of information,an important matter for lead-user theory. It also was found that adding measures of users' local resources can improve the ability of the lead-user construct to identify commercially attractive innovations under some conditions. The findings reported here have practical as well as theoretical import. Product modification and development has been found to be a relatively common user behavior in many fields. Thus, from 10 to nearly 40 percent of users report having modified or developed a product for in-house use in the case of industrial products or for personal use in the case of consumer products in fields sampled to date. As a practical matter, therefore, it is important to find ways to selectively identify the user innovations that manufacturers will find to be the basis for commercially attractive products in the collectivity of user-developed innovations. The implications of these findings for theory as well as for practical applications of the lead-user construct are discussed,that is, how variables used in lead-user studies can profitably be adapted to fit specific study contexts and purposes. [source]

Learning from leading-edge customers at The Sims: opening up the innovation process using toolkits

R & D MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2006
Reinhard Prügl
Recently, toolkits for user innovation and design have been proposed as a promising means of opening up the innovation process to customers. Using these tools, customers can take on problem-solving tasks and design products to fit their individual needs. To date, arguments in favor of this new concept have been limited to the idea of satisfying each user's needs in a highly efficient and valuable way. The aim of this empirical study is to extend our knowledge of how users deal with ,the invitation to innovate' and how attractive individual user designs might be to other users. In studying the users of toolkits for the immensely popular computer game The Sims, we found that (1) users are not ,one-time shoppers', in fact, their innovative engagement is rather long-lasting, continuous, evolving, and intense. We also found that (2) leading-edge users do not merely content themselves with the official toolkits provided by the manufacturer. They employ user-created tools to push design possibilities even further. (3) Moreover, individual user designs are not only attractive to the creators themselves; instead, certain innovative solutions are in high demand among other users. Based on our findings, we discuss how toolkits and their users might add to the process of innovation in general. We argue that toolkits could serve as a promising market research tool for guiding a firm's new product development efforts. Furthermore, toolkits may serve as a crèche for interested but inexperienced users who could evolve into leading-edge users over time. These innovative users might then be integrated into more radical product development efforts. [source]