The Sources of Innovation

By Hippel Von and Eric von Hippel

Book Overview

It has long been assumed that new product innovations are typically developed by product manufacturers, an assumption that has inevitably had a major impact on innovation-related research and activities ranging from how firms organize their research and development to how governments measure innovation. In this synthesis of his seminal research, von Hippel challenges that basic assumption and demonstrates that innovation occurs in different places in different industries. Presenting a series of studies showing that end-users, material suppliers, and others are the typical sources of innovation in some fields, von Hippel explores why this variation in the "functional" sources of innovation occurs and how it might be predicted. He also proposes and tests some implications of replacing a manufacturer-as-innovator assumption with a view of the innovation process as predictably distributed across users, manufacturers, and suppliers. Innovation, he argues, will take place where there is greatest economic benefit to the innovator.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195040856
• ISBN13: 9780195040852
• Release Date: March 1988
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.6" x 0.9" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Excellent research and rooted in the REAL world

I owe this book and his author a host of insights. It helped me to build a solid vocabulary to talk about innovation and inspired me to give a talk about Innovation at work. This research involves a lot of shoe-leather work and solid research. It helps us to answer the questions: Why innovate in the first place, what is innovation, and who are the sources of innovation? It addresses the hot question of breakthrough innovation in the context of Lead-user theory (where theory is not the 'theory' as in string theory but it is backed by solid work in the field.

Fascinating reading, almost prescient

This book is worth anyone's time to read. It is thought-provoking and mind-opening, especially in light of the repeated confirmations of the theories put forth in the book since it was published. Professor von Hippel's recent papers apply principles from this book to open-source software, high-performance windsurfing, and other areas. Almost prescient...

A Classic in Research into Innovation

I was shocked that I am the first person to review this book because, by now, Prof. Eric von Hippel's book is a classic in the field of research into the causes of innovation. One of von Hippel's key arguments in this book -- as well as in subsequent research and publications -- is that a lot of innovation comes from users of products and services. As users find new uses or new needs for products and services, producers often innovate to meet those needs. While that may seem obvious, this book was one of the first works to verify it in a scientific and rigorous way. Much more surprising than the conclusion just presented is how von Hippel found that users themselves often made the modifications or created new products and processes that lead to innovation. This book belongs in the library of anyone interested in innovation: scientists, engineers, economists, and businesspeople.