User Driven Innovation

I'm loving the piece in yesterdays NYT called How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It

The theme of the article is based on the concept of value creation by letting users of products modify them or improve them.  It's absolutely true. The NYT's story shares a variety of success stories where the end user created brand new products and markets that the original manufacturer didn't even consider or wouldn't have developed on their own. I've recently started to read some of the Eric Von  Hippel's work in this area. He is a Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management and a thought leader on this very topic. You can download his papers here.

End user control is happening. It's happening everywhere online with web services. Mashups are popping up all of over the place. And of course we see users increasingly create and share content.

And it's going to happen in hardware as well. Users want more control. I like what Instructutables is doing. They are off to a nice start creating a place for folks who have a passion for making their own things.

The next big frontier for end user driven innovation should be consumer electronics. Historically they have been closed devices but they will need to open up.  Why can't you create or download apps for your camera? Or why can't you connect different CE devices to create new functionality? Or why can't you improve your DVR? You should be able to and it's going to happen.

And then we will see some really fun stuff.