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Notes on Democratizing Innovation by Eric Von Hippel

Notes on DEMOCRATIZING INNOVATION- by Eric Von Hippel

Why users innovate for themselves

Users do it themselves rather than hiring a customizer because of agency costs (i.e., cost of monitoring the agent), because their needs are unique and they want to get precisely what they want, and also becuase they enjoy innovating.

Because innovation by users is widely distributed, they need a way to leverage and combine their efforts and avoid more than one user developing the same thing independently (market failure). This problem can be avoided through “innovation communities.” Innovation communities are successful…