Hybrid innovation logics: Exploratory product development with users in a corporate makerspace

Abstract

Advances in digital manufacturing technologies have not only altered R&D processes for new product development (NPD), but they have also opened new possibilities for user innovators to engage in traditionally closed innovation processes. However, incorporating external sources of user innovation—through design challenges or crowdsourcing, for example—can introduce competing logics into exploratory innovation processes. Using the lens of complexity, we conduct an ethnographic study of the competing logics at work in the NPD processes of a corporate makerspace launched by a large firm in the consumer appliances industry. The makerspace was founded with a hybrid logic, intended to combine the community logic of makers with the corporate logic of the parent organization. We analyze the conflicts that arose between logics and how the hybrid logic evolved through four iterations of the NPD process. We identify how managing multiple logics led to structural and identity changes, and we explain how two mechanisms—structural bridging and stakeholder identity linking—enabled the makerspace to innovate with a hybrid logic and overcome the constraints of a dominant logic on the NPD process. The results offer insights into dynamic organizational responses to complexity, how new business initiatives can be structured to act as exploratory units for corporate parents, and how corporate makerspaces can help incorporate external sources of innovation.

How innovation tournaments promote makers' product innovation: economic or social incentives?

“…Existing studies have discussed maker innovation from three perspectives: individual, organization and individual-organizational interface. First, scholars have focused on individual democratizing innovation to explore the roles (Yu, 2021;Hamdi-Kidar et al, 2019;von Hippel, 2005a), motivations (Globocnik and Faullant, 2021;Tabar es and Kuittinen, 2020;Hausberg and Spaeth, 2020) and characteristics of makers and users (Browder et al, 2023;Aryan et al, 2021;Fursov and Linton, 2022;Yang and Han, 2019;Yan et al, 2018). Recent research indicates that individual democratizing innovation involves two innovation paradigms: paid producer innovation paradigm and free innovation paradigm (von Hippel, 2017) [1].…”

“…First, scholars have focused on individual democratizing innovation to explore the roles (Yu, 2021; Hamdi-Kidar et al. , 2019; von Hippel, 2005a), motivations (Globocnik and Faullant, 2021; Tabarés and Kuittinen, 2020; Hausberg and Spaeth, 2020) and characteristics of makers and users (Browder et al. , 2023; Aryan et al.…”

Transitioning additive manufacturing from rapid prototyping to high‐volume production: A case study of complex final products

“…Rapid prototyping is a popular AM application because it allows new entrants to experiment with novel product designs and accelerate the innovation process (Hopp et al, 2018; Rindfleisch et al, 2017). Using online platforms, consumers, and companies share novel AM enabled designs (Stanko, 2016), while corporate makerspaces (Browder et al, 2023; Stanko, 2020) allow existing designs to be remixed as three‐dimensional models (Friesike et al, 2019; Stanko, 2016). Companies using AM in this manner are said to be harnessing “innovation as data,” where digital CADs are downloaded and a small volume of bespoke items are printed layer‐by‐layer (Rindfleisch et al, 2017).…”

Digital manufacturing and innovation

“…In the next article in this issue, Browder, Crider and Garrett (2023, “Hybrid Innovation Logics: Exploratory Product Development with Users in a Corporate Makerspace”) provide an ethnographic study of a corporate makerspace in the appliance sector. Specifically, this article seeks to understand how firms can best manage the integration of a makerspace that engages user‐innovators into an existing product development organization.…”