The Lag-User Method: Using laggards as a source of innovative ideas

Abstract

Laggards are the last users to adopt a product. Prior literature on user-led innovation ignores laggards' impact on innovation. In this paper, we develop the Lag-User Method, through which laggards can generate new ideas. Through six studies with 62 teams in three countries, we apply the method to different technologies and services and present our findings to executives to get managerial insights. Findings reveal that laggards who generate new ideas (lag-users) have different perceptions of user-friendly products and different unfulfilled needs. They prefer simple products. We propose that by involving lag-users in NPD, firms can improve the effectiveness of NPD.

Exploring Meal and Snacking Behaviour of Older Adults in Australia and China

“…Laggards are the last users to adopt a product and generally they prefer simple products [41]. They are the last to pick up on innovations and only buy an innovative product when it works completely flawlessly, and all traditional alternatives are no longer available [42].…”

VCW—Value Creation Wheel: Innovation, technology, business, and society

“…Some examples of existing solutions are: a) indoor solutions (e.g., banks of ideas, complaint and suggestion boxes, and solutions developed in-doors or outdoors); b) established tools (e.g., ABC, Balanced Scorecard, Business Model Canvas, Business Plans, Cooper Stage-Gate Model, Design Thinking, Lean Manufacturing, TQM, SERVQUAL, and Porter's 5 Forces); and c) tools that a wide range of inherently solutiondriven companies develop (e.g., Big 5 Consulting Firms, Bain & Company, BCG, Booz Allen, Everis, McKinsey, SAP, and Microsoft Solutions). For example, the VCW and the Lag-User Method, a seven-step process to generate and implement laggards' ideas (Jahanmir & Lages, 2015), can work as independent tools or complement each other. This is the case of a project with a leading global financial institution where the VCW and the Lag-User Method are applied simultaneously to complement each other and optimize results.…”

Paradoxes or trade-offs of entrepreneurship: Exploratory insights from the Cambridge eco-system

“…So we want to go and sell to individuals that are very receptive to the message and then we work from there." Jahanmir and Lages (2015) defend that late adopters can provide companies with valuable insights. Featuring the work of Jahanmir and Lages (2015) in The Wall Street Journal, Wells (2016) also confirms the growing importance and highly influential role of late adopters in shorter product life cycles of today.…”

“…Jahanmir and Lages (2015) defend that late adopters can provide companies with valuable insights. Featuring the work of Jahanmir and Lages (2015) in The Wall Street Journal, Wells (2016) also confirms the growing importance and highly influential role of late adopters in shorter product life cycles of today. In line with this line of research, the founder of a drug delivery device company believes in the critical role of late adopters:…”

“…Future research may explore which challenges of entrepreneurship are more subject to a paradoxical rather than a trade-off approach and in which contexts. Would considering late adopters of previous similar technology, or late adopters of competitors in the research and development phase (Jahanmir & Lages, 2015), affect the diffusion of their technology? Would applying existing systematic decision making tools (Lages, 2016) affect the type of approaches founders take?…”