Evolution of User Driven Innovation

Abstract

The source and driver of user driven innovation is a profound understanding of customer needs. Three main approaches to user driven innovation exist: a traditional sequential approach, a lead user approach and customer co-creation. The overall trend is toward increasing user participation throughout the innovation process. Today the leading companies successfully engage users into creative processes of their innovation activities starting in the early stages. In the energy sector user driven innovation methodologies appear promising, in particular as a mean to improve energy efficiency and save energy. This paper focuses on the evolution of user driven innovation. We present an ontology of user driven innovation. It is followed by a state-of-the-art analysis of traditional and new approaches. Finally we try to predict whether a user driven innovation approach could aid the energy sector in overcoming challenges related to global warming and oil shortage.

Open and collaborative innovation for the energy transition: An exploratory study

“…It has been proposed, for instance, in Ref. [17] for user innovation and [63] for software engineering. Herein, the ontology is captured in the form of hierarchical conceptual relationships, which were derived from Section 2, and depicted in Fig.…”

“…In addition to improvements in physical energy products and systems, users can also innovate in the virtual domain, especially in energy modeling. In other words, "there are plenty of informed energy users who could serve as lead users and work with energy related companies to promote innovation in the sector" [17], p. 5.…”

“…Crowdsourcing refers to a company presenting a challenge to the public, who comes up with ideas and solutions [50] Physical and digital user-led innovations, e.g. [17,124,125],…”

“…The literature on innovation research is vast, and many other works could be cited herein, e.g., related to user innovation [17] and crowdsourcing [18]. Nevertheless, differently from previous works, this paper discusses the responses of companies aided by the creation of an ontology of collaborative and open approaches to innovation based on four main aspects: OI, BMI, non-producer innovation, and the open movement.…”

Rethinking Design: The Formal Integration of Engineering Innovation Into a Design Process

“…In [42], user-driven innovation methods are presented. By including the customer early on the development phase, the company, as well as the customer can benefit by providing a better end result.…”