Kviselius, N.Z. (2009). Users as Innovators - How is it Possible?

8/14/2019 Kviselius, N.Z. (2009). Users as Innovators - How is it Possible?

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”USERS AS INNOVATORS – HOW IS IT POSSIBLE”Niklas Kviselius, Stockholm School of Economics

May 2009



Two trends of openness have in emerged enabling OpenInnovation. 1.) Increased interest in learning from users, 2.)

Advances in development and usage of social media.

Users are shifting from being bystanders to being participants.

Let us briefly focus on the notionof openness. Innovation hasthroughout industrial history showntraits of openness versus closeness.Practices that today would be labeledas Open Innovation, has in the pastbeen used to innovate such diverseproducts as steam-engines, semi-conductors, medicalmachinery, and sports

equipment (asdocumented by Ericvon Hippel and Georgvon Krogh in “Freerevealing and theprivate-collective model for innovationincentives”). Quite few innovationshave been conceived by a sole geniusscientist in absolute isolation and lackof external influences. So, what is thisopenness fuss all about?

There are at least two enablingtrends that have bedded for OpenInnovation as described in the recentwave of interest: 1.) Increased interestin learning from users, 2.) Advancesin development and usage of socialmedia. Both trends have implications

for a systematic opening up of innovation processes.

We are arguably within an ongoingshift towards a more market-orientedapproach to innovation (as to the viewon the company as entity as a whole).Here customer orientation has

emerged as an importantpoint of departure whendeveloping new productsand services (as

described by BoEdvardsson et al in“Involving customers innew servicedevelopment”). Sure, this

shift has been going on for manyyears now and no eyebrows are raisedwhen the CEO acclaims “Look - let’scheck out what our customers want,instead of what our machinery canproduce.” Together active learning

(e.g. organizing focus groups) andpassive learning (e.g. studyingtransaction data or online behavior),with the customers as teachers, isincreasingly used for example tocreate personalized environments andproducts for consumers.


May 2009

“Innovation has throughout

industrial history

shown traits of openness versus closeness.”



For the marketing department thisincreasing interaction has spurredpossibilities to adapt the marketingmessages correspondingly and talkabout one-to-one marketing.

This outstretched hand to customersis clearly representingan opening of theinnovation processes.But some more stepsare necessary before“learning from users”becomes “co-creatingwith users”. If initialstrong inputs fromusers rapidly arefollowed by a steep

decrease in user influence on forexample problem-solving andevaluation, then we can only talkabout partial openness.

The other, and more recent, trend isthe virtual explosion of new socialmedia. Social media has beendescribed as ways of creating contentusing highly accessible and scalableInternet publishing technologies. Thisconversion of mere “readers” into“authors” and “publishers” haschanged the media sphere andprovided distinct new user-createdmedia types (compared tonewspapers, television and film) suchas blogs and podcasts. In a way thishas meant opening up of previously

closed ways of expressing oneself andsharing this content with manyothers. This opening up of the medialandscape, due to technologicaladvances as well as wittiness of usersand maturity in usage, has started toimpact also innovation practices.Several of these technologies and

user behaviors, in thehands of savvy managersor innovators, have beenshown to becomepowerful innovationtools.

These two trends of openness haveconverged in enabling

the crucial concept of users asinnovators, at the core of OpenInnovation. Observe the choice of theword users as opposed to consumersor customers. There seem to be muchto benefit from for example openingup innovation to more employees andsuppliers and so to speak tap ideasfrom all ranks - more on this infollowing articles. ¶


May 2009

“...some moresteps are

necessary before"learning from

users" become "co- creating with

users".”



1

Open InnovationFrom the Open Innovation Forum’s perspective open innovation involves all aspects of creating new business opportunities by engaging end-users in co-creative activities. Web2.0 technologies has caused electronic collaboration to evolve, hence paving the way forcompanies to invite customers and employees to be involved in the refinement of theirofferings. Ideally open innovation will create win-win situations where users get servicesthat are more oriented to their needs and organizations will offer services that are moredesired by the market.

The Open Innovation ForumThe Open Innovation Forum aims at being a knowledge hub and rallying point for user-oriented open innovation, where innovation experts and researchers can collaborate onimproving theories and practices, while open innovation novices are invited to follow, ortake active part, in the development of the area.

www.openinnovationforum.com


Niklas Z Kviselius has a Master and PhD from Stockholm School of Economics with specialization inInternational Business and Marketing. Niklas currently does research on open innovation, aspects of trust in internationalization, and innovation and roll-out strategies in the ICT-industry. Much of his research has been focused on business relationships with the Japanese market.

Further reading

Eric A. Von Hippel & Georg Von Krogh. (2006). Free Revealing and the Private-CollectiveModel for Innovation Incentives. R&D Management, 36(3), pp. 295-306.

Bo Edvardsson, Anders Gustafsson, Per Kristensson, Peter Magnusson & Jonas Matthing(Eds.). (2006). Involving customers in new service development. Imperial College Press.

The content in this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribute 3.0 License, which allows the materialto freely be copied, distributed, transmitted and remixed as long as the work is attributed to the original authors.

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Kviselius, N.Z. (2009). Users as Innovators - How is it Possible?