SKILLS - MOD 2

In user innovation, what is the fundamental difference between a user innovator and a producer innovator?

• User innovators do not have the resources of producer innovators

• Users benefit directly from their innovations

What does X stand for?

The X wants to get precisely what the X needs, to the extent that the X can afford to do so. In contrast, the Y wants to lower Y’s development costs by incorporating solution elements the Y already has or that the Y predicts others will want in the future.

Users tend to develop innovations that:

(2 are correct)

• are functionally novel

• require substantial user-need and context-of-use information

• are incremental

• are dimension-of-merit improvements

Manufacturers tend to develop innovations that:

• are functionally novel

• are improvements on well-known needs

• foreshadow future market need

• require substantial user-need and context-of-use information

The X wants to get precisely what the X needs, to the extent that the X can afford to do so. In contrast, the Y wants to lower Y’s development costs by incorporating solution elements the Y already has or that the Y predicts others will want in the future

.What does Y stand for?

Need and solution information are often very [FILL IN THE BLANK] – that is, costly to move from the site where the information was generated to other sites.

Consider the following excerpt from Technology Review on the invention of the World Wide Web and its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

"Berners-Lee’s innovation was to apply hypertext to the growing reality of networked computers. He expanded the idea he had developed at CERN and made it available on the Internet in the summer of 1991."

The invention of the World Wide Web was not a user innovation. Rather, it was a producer innovation because Tim Berners-Lee was employed by CERN when he made the invention.

• true

• false

Who is likely to have better system-of-use information?

• User

• Producer

Who is likely to have better generic solution information?

• User

• Producer

When information is sticky, innovators tend to ..."

• hire custom manufacturers

• rely on information they already have

• organize into innovation communities

• avoid low cost innovation niches