Excerpt from Gartner Interview: I mean that the tools for high-quality innovation are getting so cheap and so ubiquitous that individuals can innovate for themselves at a steadily higher quality and at a steadily decreasing cost. Because of the Internet, it is also true that people can innovate collaboratively at a steadily lower cost. Open-source software projects are a great example in the arena of information products, but the same thing is happening for hardware too. When innovation becomes democratized, many traditional assumptions about innovation and the best ways to innovate are upended. For example, the advantages that the traditional machinery firms have in place with respect to innovation come into question. When innovation resources are cheap and well diffused, what firms ought to do is let a thousand flowers bloom, as they say, and then select the best flower. It no longer makes sense for corporate marketing researchers to go around asking passive consumers what kind of flower they would like, if only they could have it and then, after huge process efforts, decide to develop that flower.
Eric von Hippel is Professor of Technological Innovation in the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Professor in MIT’s Engineering Systems Division. He specializes in research related to the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He also develops and teaches about practical methods that individuals, open user communities, and firms can apply to improve their product and service development processes.
