Look closer at most workplace policies and you’ll see huge improvement needs. Or pick up most tools you use ... and you’ll find an entrepreneur asking …”How could this be improved? It doesn’t need to be that way, and a new movement is already afoot. 
It’s called user centered innovation … and it could create a major shift for managers and policymakers who adapt more creations to fit your best work into an Internet era. It changes how we look at change!
According to Eric von Hippel, Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT, innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Think of the advantages where you work…. The process of user-centered innovation can benefit both users and manufacturers. Its emergence will bring dynamic changes in business models and public policy. Do you believe that?
In his new book … Democratizing Innovation … von Hippel explains why users find it profitable to create new products and services for themselves. He shows how it will pay users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.
Already the trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in free share-ware software, for instance. Other examples of innovation in action ... range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features.
Von Hippel suggests that manufacturers redesign their innovation processes and systematically seek out innovations developed by users. This positive impact on social welfare, von Hippel suggests … should motivate government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, to be realigned to eliminate biases against user innovation. So why is it done only rarely?
While customers can often come up with new or improved products ... some firms still sue people who change original creations. For instance, when a devoted user of Aibo, Sony's robot dog, wrote applications that enabled Aibo to dance to music, Sony threatened to sue the man.
What’s the opposite of entrepreneurial innovation? No innovation at all ... and it also means no value added, and ultimately no new profits. To redesign innovation economics is to pump new life into dead bureaucracies and shrinking markets. Would user-centered innovation be worth a try where you work?
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