Manufacturers learn from users' creativity

Manufacturers learn from users' creativity

By Robert Weisman
April 17, 2005
Source

When Lego Mindstorms made their debut in 1998 after a lengthy product development cycle, Lego marketing officials were surprised to discover that the robotic toys were popular not only with teenagers but with adult hobbyists eager to improve on them.

Within three weeks of their release, user groups had sprung up and tinkerers had reverse engineered and reprogrammed the sensors, motors, and controller devices at the heart of the Mindstorms robotic system -- and sent their suggestions to Lego. The company, at first uncertain how to respond, ultimately incorporated user ideas.

Similar scenarios have been playing out in recent years for products as diverse as snowboards, music synthesizers, and integrated circuits. And the rise of such user-centered innovation is causing a tectonic shift in the way companies develop and market products.

Eric von Hippel, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, examines that shift in a new book, ''Democratizing Innovation," which argues that manufacturers should redesign their processes to systematically seek out user ideas and innovations.

By drawing on the creativity of ''lead users," who are often ahead of the curve on technology and marketplace trends, companies can improve the chances that their new products will be commercially viable, von Hippel maintains. The ''open source" development model in the computer software field is quickly spreading to other sectors, as communities of users help aircraft builders design passenger jets and banks to structure loan and investment offerings.

Von Hippel shows the trend already is more advanced than is generally known, and users often freely reveal their innovations for the common good. ''The social efficiency of a system in which individual innovations are developed by individual users is increased if users somehow diffuse what they have developed to others," he writes.

In an interview, von Hippel, who heads the Sloan School's innovation and entrepreneurship group, said the transition to user-centered innovation is hard for some companies to swallow.

''Companies are not used to this," he observed. ''They're used to the traditional model of find-a-need-and-fill-it. They've set up structures to do that, and their structures are geared toward getting rid of the lead users as outliers. But now they're confronted with this new model of innovation where everyone follows the lead users."

In defining users, von Hippel includes businesses that buy goods and services from other businesses. Boeing Co., for example, solicits feedback from its airline customers on new jumbo jet configurations and is heavily involved with its machine tool suppliers on the design of new production equipment. ''What you see is economic activity shifting to the side of use," von Hippel said.

Cambridge Consultants, a British design and development company that recently opened an office in South Boston, invents its own products but also works closely with customers and users.

''Certainly, in the medical device space, a lot of the innovation is coming from the user -- the surgeon and the clinician -- not the engineers," said Andrew Diston, senior vice president of Cambridge Consultants. ''They don't have the wherewithal to convert their thinking into a patentable prototype, so they work through us."

Ultimately, user-centered innovation may transform not only companies' product development processes but also business models, turning them into the providers of innovation toolkits to users and the marketers of their innovations, von Hippel suggests.

Change may also come to government policy, on research subsidies, tax credits, and intellectual property, now weighted in favor of manufacturers. ''Government should be more interested in encouraging innovation than in protecting business models," von Hippel said.


Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.