How Consumers Power Innovation

In many fields, the user is often the innovator. In the space of scientific instruments, 77 percent of the innovation comes from end users. Yet we generally believe the opposite: that users satisfy their own, personal needs while manufacturers dominate innovation. As a result, our understanding of intellectual property tends to protect manufacturers, not users: firms are likely to patent their (internal, otherwise invisible) innovations and not share them, while individuals working in similar spaces usually don't seek patent production and often share their processes. This may reveal basic biases in how individuals and firms behave. MIT Professor Eric von Hippel notes that it's counterintuitive that we expect manufacturers to innovate - we should expect them to manufacture efficiently, but perhaps to look to their users for design innovation.

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