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We develop a model of innovation communities which allows us to address in a systematic way the influence of users and developers as well as communication between and within these groups. Based on this model, we derive a formal approach to quantify communication flows, community activity and community turnover. These measures are calculated using the data of 100 open source software projects. Our empirical analysis shows that: (i) Users play indeed a predominant role in communication, which points towards the vivid role of an active user community; (ii) communication is highly concentrated, which points towards the importance of active individuals and (iii) community turnover exhibits only little correlation with community segregation, which may allow to benefit from high turnover rates while keeping negative effects small. We argue that insight from this extensive analysis not only complements existing case studies, it also provides a reference frame to put these singular results into perspective when aiming at generalizations.

Online communities (OCs) have become an important source for identifying the needs and problems of users, supporting companies in innovation. This development was fostered by IT/Internet technologies and has also been strengthened through recent social changes in user behavior within "Web 2.0." In contrast to its growing relevance, user innovation activities within OCs are still underexplored. Companies that wish to successfully utilize and integrate innovative OC members into their NPD process need a better understanding of the drivers and changes of user motivation in such communities. In this paper we analyze, categorize and integrate different motivational factors that play a major role here and develop several propositions concerning motivation within innovation communities.

An important and frequently researched concept in the field of open innovation is the integration of lead users into the process for developing innovative product concepts. Social media has offered promising new possibilities for companies in terms of supporting lead user integration. This paper provides an overview of relevant aspects of lead user research, as well as the identification of lead users. Furthermore, we connect lead user theory with social media and discuss possible ways to identify lead users. Based on the conclusion that existing research does not yet sufficiently provide a detailed understanding on identifying lead users in social media, we conducted an empirical study to gain deeper insights in the social media habits of lead users; this involved a case study comprising 20 interviews.

This study’s findings present a rather ambivalent picture, concluding that identifying lead users via social media may work with some limitations. Social media can contribute complementary with established approaches like pyramiding to the identification of lead users, but it is not a standalone solution. It strongly depends on the content of the project and on the group of individuals where lead users should be originated. Based on these findings, we derive theoretical and managerial implications and show how companies can utilize social media in addition to established methods for identifying lead users. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of study limitations and recommendations for areas of further research.

Earlier research on the lead user method is focused on individual case studies and how the method was applied in a specific context. In this paper, we take a broader approach, analyzing a sample of 24 lead user projects, which included working with 188 lead users. These projects were analyzed regarding their specific processes, resources, challenges, and success factors, using the data of an open innovation intermediary. The key finding is that a refinement and elaboration phase and the integration of designers are crucial success factors which, to date, have not been included in the literature. Moreover, crowdsourcing contests and netnography proved to be of significant value for the need, trend, and lead user identification phases. This paper concludes by discussing theoretical and practical implications, the limitations of this study, and recommendations for future studies.

Research on the lead user method has been conducted for more than thirty years and has shown that the method is more likely to generate breakthrough innovation than traditional market research tools. Based on a systematic literature review, this paper shows a detailed view on the broad variety of research on lead user characteristics, lead user processes, lead user identification and application, and success factors. The main challenge of the lead user method as identified in literature is the resource issue regarding time, manpower, and costs. Also, internal acceptance and the processing of the method have been spotted in literature, as well as the intellectual property protection issue. From the starting point of the initial lead user method process introduced by Lüthje and Herstatt (2004), results are integrated into a revisited view on the lead user method process. In addition, concrete suggestions for corporate realization options are given. The article closes with limitations and future research suggestions.

User innovators follow multiple diffusion and adoption pathways for their self-developed innovations. Users may choose to commercialize their self-developed products on the marketplace by becoming entrepreneurs. Few studies exist that focus on understanding personal and interpersonal factors that affect some user innovators’ entrepreneurial decision-making. Hence, this paper focuses on how user innovators make key decisions relating to opportunity recognition and evaluation and when opportunity evaluation leads to subsequent entrepreneurial action in the entrepreneurial process. We conducted an exploratory study using a multi-grounded theory methodology as the user entrepreneurship phenomenon embodies complex social processes. We collected data through the netnography approach that targeted 18 entrepreneurs with potentially relevant differences through crowdfunding platforms. We integrated self-determination, human capital, and social capital theory to address the phenomena under study. This study’s significant findings posit that users’ motives are dissatisfaction with existing goods, interest in innovation, altruism, social recognition, desire for independence, and economic benefits. Besides, use-related experience, product-related knowledge, product diffusion, and iterative feedback positively impact innovative users’ entrepreneurial decision-making.

The focus of this study is on how online brand communities are utilised throughout the new product development (NPD) process by promoting communications between firms and communities. We investigate leading MP3 player manufacturers and mobile phone handset manufacturers in Korea. The results of our case studies show that the roles of online brand communities vary along the NPD stages — from trendsetters (lead users) to innovation facilitators (users as innovators), and information disseminators (early adopters). These communities can help firms gain insight into customer needs, desirable characteristics of new products and trends for future development. Furthermore, various inputs from online brand communities can stimulate firms' internal communication among several departments involved in the NPD. Finally, this study suggests the extended research model and generates hypotheses on the roles and impacts of online brand communities.

Users have proven to be a principal driving force of many innovations in different industries. Therefore, more and more firms try to identify avenues to systematically involve users into their new product development. Despite the growing interest in user-driven or user-centred innovation, both in academia and industry, the drivers and impediments affecting the evolvement of user innovation activities over time have only recently become a focus of analysis. This study aims to examine user innovation over time and contribute to the extension of the existing model of user-driven innovation to a more dynamic setting. For this purpose, we study the evolution of user innovation in a field of sports equipment, a high-performance sailboat called Moth. We analyse innovation activities over several decades based on secondary data, interviews and survey results. We find that the level of user activity does not follow a unidirectional trend, but rather develops depending on a number of contextual factors. This suggests that, given a stimulating setting, user innovation can be sustained over long periods of time.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the existing methods of building new product concepts in a qualitative "two-case" case study with action research approach combined with method comparison. Companies need an effective method to create radical product concepts and product visions. The commonly used focus group method is too simplistic for achieving deep understanding about the user needs. Innovation competitions are seen as a solution to the following major industry challenges: ineffectiveness of traditional market research, structural innovation gap, closed innovation paradigm, and the low amount, low quality and low variance of innovation opportunities. A new design for next generation innovation competition, the "InnoCoop" method, is introduced. InnoCoop produces more holistic product concepts, involves management in participation, is active in terms of working methods, offers more surprise elements, and produces more creative ideas. Traditional method produces singular, but concrete ideas and is more passive in terms of working methods.

Online communities (OCs), especially those related to particular products or brands, have become a potent means of identifying user needs and solution ideas, thereby supporting companies to innovate. Despite their growing relevance, user innovation activities within consumer OCs still are underexplored. Members' motivations to innovate and contribute to OCs, in particular, belong to a young line of research requiring further investigation. This study contributes to this line of research by providing an in-depth netnographic analysis of innovative, privately operated OCs dedicated to tangible consumer products. Most fundamentally, we differentiate: (1) motives to join OCs, (2) motives to innovate, and (3) motives to publish innovations in OCs. It is the first study that categorizes the motives of innovative OC members depending on membership lifecycle and situational factors. Our results support companies in understanding members' motives in privately operated OCs relating to the company's brand or products. Thus, it provides a foundation for the development of specific incentives and tools that stimulate user activity.

The existing research on the behaviour of user innovators has focused almost exclusively on younger users. In light of the demographic shift and the increasing importance of the "Silver Market" segment (customers 55 years plus), we analysed whether important determinants of user innovator behaviour (use experience, product knowledge, technical expertise, and the lead user components) exert the same influence among older users. We conducted a study in the camping and caravanning industry and included 333 respondents from 19 to 86 years of age. The innovator share among older users was slightly lower (43% versus 57%). While use experience and product knowledge turned out less important for older users in our sample, technical expertise materialised as the most important determinant. Additionally, being ahead of trend is stronger related to dissatisfaction with existing products among older users. We found additional evidence that users with high use experience suffer from functional fixedness.

Users play an increasingly important role in product and service innovation. Finding the right users can require substantial search effort. Network searches are increasingly popular in searching for rare lead users. In these searches, implicit and inexact referrals have been found to comprise a substantial number of network referrals; numbers as high as 70% of the most important referrals to sought people have been reported. To aid handling such referrals during network searches, we explicate their status as intermediate referral types, and how these referral types relate to known search methods. The constraints set by intermediate referrals could potentially be overcome and their potential be capitalized through more extensive method combination in network searches than has been trialed to date. We proceed to offer a proof of concept for such searches through documenting how we ran them in four realworld searches and chart future research avenues.

Innovation outcome measures are an important indicator of the economic potential of user involvement. Therefore, this study assesses empirically the relationship between users' knowledge as an input factor to innovation and firms' innovation success. The results strongly support the hypotheses: (i) that users have the potential to essentially improve the innovative performance of firms; (ii) that the method of interaction during the innovation process and the characteristics of involved users matter as well. The more firms make use of emphatic design and interact with advanced and lead users, the stronger is the relationship between access to users' knowledge and firm innovation success measured in sales of innovative products.

User driven innovation (UDI) is a popular term in policy and corporate circles. However, it is not clear exactly what UDI means and how such practices are used across the spectrum of companies and over the innovation life cycle. The present study compares 58 UDI showcases in Finnish companies in order to analyse the diversity of UDI practices and their evolution over time. We identify five main modes of UDI and show how the ways of using UDI develop over time in individual companies. In almost half of the examined cases, the dominant mode of UDI changes at least once, and in some cases, up to three changes in dominant mode are observed. We then proceed to identify six qualitatively different ways in which companies’ orientation to UDI evolves over time. The study has implications for innovation management and policy: It calls for greater attention to UDI diversity and particularly to the management and support of the continuity of UDI efforts.

With the aim of contributing to the existing knowledge of brand community members and their willingness to share ideas, we investigate whether and how brand community innovators’ (i) lead user characteristics, (ii) brand community identification, (iii) brand knowledge, (iv) brand loyalty and (v) preferences regarding the brand owner’s interference in community activities influence their willingness to share their ideas with the company. In contrast to earlier studies, which inquired into brand community members’ intentions to share their ideas [see Füller, J, K Matzler and M Hoppe (2008). Brand community members as a source of innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 25, 608–619], we studied members who had already innovated and were actively involved in innovation processes.

Using a survey of the Adult Fans of Lego (AFOL) community, we found that brand community members’ willingness to share their ideas is positively related to the ahead of the trend (AT) dimension of lead user characteristics, brand community identification and brand loyalty. Interference by the company in community activities also plays a role. Surprisingly, the brand community innovators perceive this role oppositely to what prior research on firm-hosted and open-source communities suggests. This study extends our knowledge of brand communities by demonstrating how brand community innovators’ interpersonal contexts, personal traits and brand perceptions may promote or demote willingness to share.

This paper examines diverse service innovations created with service robots in living labs that are an under researched and growing area of scholarly research. In particular, there is a need for research that connects robotics with welfare and health care living labs. This study focusses on the nexus between the different types of robots and services in living labs. It contributes to the literatures of open innovation and living labs by developing a conceptual framework for analysing service innovations enabled by robotics in eight living lab cases. The framework distinguishes four archetypes of service innovations in health and welfare living labs: (i) socialising, (ii) aiding, (iii) entertaining, and (iv) personal assisting. The paper concludes with implications to theory and practice, and suggests directions for future research.

Practitioners increasingly use innovation contests to harness the knowledge of external crowds for internal innovation purposes in exchange for prize money. While some innovation contests have the objective to attract professional experts from distant fields to obtain technical solutions, other innovation contests primarily target customers or users in order to generate new product and service ideas. Hence, external crowds differ substantially across, but also within, innovation contests in terms of personal needs in the innovation domain. Drawing upon the private-collective model of innovation, we argue that participants’ “userness” in terms of personal needs gives rise to non-monetary reward expectations and collectively oriented participation as opposed to the private pursuit of monetary rewards emphasised in innovation contests. Hence, the effectiveness of monetary rewards in innovation contests is bound to certain participants and behaviours. In particular, participants weigh non-monetary rewards more strongly against monetary rewards (1) when their personal need in the innovation domain is high, and (2) when choosing to engage collectively in evaluating and commenting on other contributions as opposed to submitting own contributions. We find support for these hypotheses in an empirical study where user participation in a real innovation contest is regressed on survey-based measures of expected rewards that users perceive prior to the contest. The observed effect sizes of the proposed shifts from monetary to non-monetary rewards are so pronounced that for a given level of personal need and a given type of participation behaviour only either reward type is effective and a compensational relation between both types of rewards does not exist. Monetary rewards are even detrimental and lower user participation if the two proposed boundary conditions are taken together.

Across industries, companies operate open innovation platforms that encourage users to share ideas and become product designers. Likewise, companies explicitly promote products based on user ideas as “user-designed” (e.g., McDonald’s MyBurger, LEGO Ideas). This paper introduces and empirically investigates two managerially relevant factors that can influence the effect of user-designed products on consumers’ reactions. Specifically, Studies 1a and 1b reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between the share of user-designed products in a company’s product portfolio and consumers’ purchase intentions, which is mediated by consumers’ perceptions of the company’s innovation ability. Study 2 examines the role of the market entry strategy for user-designed products. While the inverted U-shaped effect holds for followers, the relationship between the share of user-designed products and consumers’ purchase intentions becomes U-shaped for first movers. These results suggest that user-designed products can have unexpected consequences that managers need to be aware of and consider in their actions.

To date, one of the most prominent methods to integrate users into the innovation process is the lead user method. However, due to its high resource intensity, it is less used than its potential would allow. In times of the internet and especially social media, this is changing since methods like netnography allow to efficiently identify potential lead users. Hence, based on a case study in the aviation industry, targeted screening and pyramiding are combined to identify lead users. Three users with sufficient characteristics to be lead users were included based on their degree-centrality and relevant contribution on Twitter. This study proposes the combination of these methods and Twitter as a suitable approach for lead user identification.

With the aim of contributing to the existing knowledge of brand community members and their willingness to share ideas, we investigate whether and how brand community innovators’ (i) lead user characteristics, (ii) brand community identification, (iii) brand knowledge, (iv) brand loyalty and (v) preferences regarding the brand owner’s interference in community activities influence their willingness to share their ideas with the company. In contrast to earlier studies, which inquired into brand community members’ intentions to share their ideas [see Füller, J, K Matzler and M Hoppe (2008). Brand community members as a source of innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 25, 608–619], we studied members who had already innovated and were actively involved in innovation processes. Using a survey of the Adult Fans of Lego (AFOL) community, we found that brand community members’ willingness to share their ideas is positively related to the ahead of the trend (AT) dimension of lead user characteristics, brand community identification and brand loyalty. Interference by the company in community activities also plays a role. Surprisingly, the brand community innovators perceive this role oppositely to what prior research on firm-hosted and open-source communities suggests. This study extends our knowledge of brand communities by demonstrating how brand community innovators’ interpersonal contexts, personal traits and brand perceptions may promote or demote willingness to share.