Shifting Innovation to Users via Toolkits

Eric von Hippel () and Ralph Katz ()
Additional contact information
Eric von Hippel: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Ralph Katz: 304 Hayden Hall, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Management Science, 2002, vol. 48, issue 7, 821-833

Abstract: In the traditional new product development process, manufacturers first explore user needs and then develop responsive products. Developing an accurate understanding of a user need is not simple or fast or cheap, however. As a result, the traditional approach is coming under increasing strain as user needs change more rapidly, and as firms increasingly seek to serve "markets of one." Toolkits for user innovation is an emerging alternative approach in which manufacturers actually abandon the attempt to understand user needs in detail in favor of transferring need-related aspects of product and service development to users. Experience in fields where the toolkit approach has been pioneered show custom products being developed much more quickly and at a lower cost. In this paper we explore toolkits for user innovation and explain why and how they work.

Keywords: user innovation; toolkits; mass customization; product development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (116)

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