Users as Innovators: A Review, Critique, and Future Research Directions

2010/01/26 by Marcel Bogers, Allan Afuah, Bettina Lynda Bastian · 1 citation
Computer Science · Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · Engineering · #Open Source Software Innovations #Innovation and Socioeconomic Development #Knowledge Management and Sharing #Knowledge management #Sociology #Engineering ethics #Business #Epistemology #Computer science #Engineering

paper · doi:10.1177/0149206309353944

openalex publication_date 2010/01/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

What role do users play during innovation? Ever since it was argued that users can also be the sources of innovation, the literature on the role of users during innovation has grown tremendously. In this article, the authors review this growing literature, critique it, and develop some of the research questions that could be explored to contribute to this literature and to the theoretical perspectives that underpin the literature.

Citations

• A man on the inside: Unlocking communities as complementary assets
• On the Identity of Technological Objects and User Innovations in Function
• Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms
• Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments
• Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation
• The Lead User method: an outline of empirical findings and issues for future research
• Determinants of User Innovation and Innovation Sharing in a Local Market
• A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation
• Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing
• Challenges of open innovation: the paradox of firm investment in open-source software
• Lead Users: A Source of Novel Product Concepts
• Some Simple Economics of Open Source
• Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage
• From experience: Developing new product concepts via the lead user method: A case study in a “low-tech” field

Cited by

• User innovation [wikipedia]

Related

• Users as sources for radical service innovations: opportunities from collaboration with service lead users
• A New Innovation Concept on End user Contextual and Behavioural Perspectives
• When necessity is the mother of disruption: Users versus producers as sources of disruptive innovation
• The User Innovation Paradigm: Impacts on Markets and Welfare
• Harnessing the Creative Potential among Users*