Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom
In a first survey of its type, we measure development and modification of consumer products by product users in a representative sample of 1,173 UK consumers age 18 and older. We estimate this previously unmeasured type of household sector innovation to be quite large: 6.1% of UK consumers—nearly 2....
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
2013
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76350 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7235-1032 |
| _version_ | 1826193325964656640 |
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| author | von Hippel, Eric A. Jong de, Jeroen P. J. Flowers, Stephen |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management von Hippel, Eric A. Jong de, Jeroen P. J. Flowers, Stephen |
| author_sort | von Hippel, Eric A. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | In a first survey of its type, we measure development and modification of consumer products by product users in a representative sample of 1,173 UK consumers age 18 and older. We estimate this previously unmeasured type of household sector innovation to be quite large: 6.1% of UK consumers—nearly 2.9 million individuals—have engaged in consumer product innovation during the prior three years. In aggregate, consumers' annual product development expenditures are more than 1.4 times larger than the annual consumer product R&D expenditures of all firms in the United Kingdom combined. Consumers engage in many small projects that seem complementary to the innovation efforts of incumbent producers. Consumer innovators very seldom protect their innovations via intellectual property, and 17% diffuse to others. These results imply that, at the country level, productivity studies yield inflated effect sizes for producer innovation in consumer goods. They also imply that existing companies should reconfigure their product development systems to find and build on prototypes developed by consumers. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:37:12Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/76350 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:37:12Z |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publisher | Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/763502022-09-26T12:42:28Z Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom von Hippel, Eric A. Jong de, Jeroen P. J. Flowers, Stephen Sloan School of Management von Hippel, Eric A. In a first survey of its type, we measure development and modification of consumer products by product users in a representative sample of 1,173 UK consumers age 18 and older. We estimate this previously unmeasured type of household sector innovation to be quite large: 6.1% of UK consumers—nearly 2.9 million individuals—have engaged in consumer product innovation during the prior three years. In aggregate, consumers' annual product development expenditures are more than 1.4 times larger than the annual consumer product R&D expenditures of all firms in the United Kingdom combined. Consumers engage in many small projects that seem complementary to the innovation efforts of incumbent producers. Consumer innovators very seldom protect their innovations via intellectual property, and 17% diffuse to others. These results imply that, at the country level, productivity studies yield inflated effect sizes for producer innovation in consumer goods. They also imply that existing companies should reconfigure their product development systems to find and build on prototypes developed by consumers. 2013-01-23T17:00:16Z 2013-01-23T17:00:16Z 2012-05 2010-09 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0025-1909 1526-5501 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76350 von Hippel, E., J. P. J. de Jong, and S. Flowers. “Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom.” Management Science 58.9 (2012): 1669–1681. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7235-1032 en_US http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1287/mnsc.1110.1508 Management Science Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) SSRN |
| spellingShingle | von Hippel, Eric A. Jong de, Jeroen P. J. Flowers, Stephen Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom |
| title | Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom |
| title_full | Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom |
| title_fullStr | Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom |
| title_full_unstemmed | Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom |
| title_short | Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the United Kingdom |
| title_sort | comparing business and household sector innovation in consumer products findings from a representative study in the united kingdom |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76350 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7235-1032 |
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