(2005-07-10) Hippel Democratizing Innovation Free

Eric Von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation ISBN:0-262-00274-4 (User Innovation) is available as a free (PDF) EBook.

Aug update: Adina Levin compares his Co-Creation advice to Geoffrey Moore's. Moving away from Moore’s understanding of users as eager but passive “consumers” and focusing on the active role played by lead customer innovation, von Hippel reaches several insights that Moore didn’t a decade ago. Many lead user customizations are one-offs which allow a manufactured product access to an application the vendor couldn’t supply cost-effectively. Many other lead user customizations are applicable to a larger class of customers, and vendors can use the signals of end-user customization to lead their next-generation product development efforts.