Lead users: a source of novel product concepts
Management Science
Lead user analyses for the development of new industrial products
Management Science
Mastering the dynamics of innovation
Mastering the dynamics of innovation
Localization of Knowledge and the Mobility of Engineers in Regional Networks
Management Science
Technological Opportunities and New Firm Creation
Management Science
Links and Impacts: The Influence of Public Research on Industrial R&D
Management Science
A Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm--The Problem-Solving Perspective
Organization Science
Innovation At and Across Multiple Levels of Analysis
Organization Science
Lone Inventors as Sources of Breakthroughs: Myth or Reality?
Management Science
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The extensive academic literature on innovation has long recognized product users as a potentially important source of ideas. Although prior work has primarily focused on understanding the unique motivations and knowledge that allow users to generate their own innovations, we extend existing theory to investigate the contribution of users to corporate invention. We draw on the knowledge-based view of the firm, evolutionary theory, and the user innovation literature to theorize that corporate inventions that integrate user knowledge will be of greater importance, contribute to a broader set of follow-on technologies, and occur earlier in the product life cycle than other corporate inventions do. We test these propositions with a large data set of medical device inventions. We find support for our predictions and discuss the implications of our results for the theoretical and empirical literature on organizational innovation.