Open innovation
How does the lead user method enhance your innovation project?
How does the lead user method enhance your innovation project?
Lead users are highly advanced users and customers. They are often inventors or pioneers in their field. With their needs and requirements for products, processes, or services, you are ahead of the curve.
If you integrate lead users into the development process as early as possible, new developments will benefit hugely from this. According to an empirical study, anticipated revenues increase by up to eight-fold. The risk of failure is reduced enormously, because the results are closer to the needs of customers and users.
Inventive
Discovered by users: the mountain bike and World Wide Web
Discovered by users: the mountain bike and World Wide Web
A clique of cyclists developed a successful product out of bicycles. They felt the heavy steel frame, thick tires, and insufficiently effective brakes could be improved. Thus arose the mountain bike. Series production started in the 1980s and the mountain bike conquered the market.
The groundwork for the World Wide Web was done by Tim Berners-Lee. He thus resolved a problem for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The worldwide exchange of information made the work of scientists difficult. In response to this, Berners-Lee developed the page description language HTML, the transfer protocol HTTP, the URL, and the first Web browser and Web server.
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With lead users, products, services, or even processes are developed in a customer-focused manner. Advanced users and customers provide valuable insights.
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Die Lead User Methode entwickelte Professor Eric von Hippel in den 1980er Jahren am MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA). Die Methode beruht auf der empirischen Erkenntnis, dass Innovationen häufig nicht von Hersteller:innen initiiert werden, sondern Anwender:innen oft als die treibende Kraft hinter Entwicklungen stehen. Diese innovativen Aktivitäten sind nicht zufällig verteilt, sondern konzentrieren sich auf eine bestimmte Gruppe von besonders fortschrittlichen Anwender:innen und Kund:innen; die sogenannten Lead User.
Ziel der Lead User Methode ist es Produkte, Prozesse, Dienstleistungen oder Geschäftsmodelle zu entwickeln, die besonders marktnah und kundenorientiert sowie auf den Endanwender:innen ausgerichtet sind. Mit der Vorgehen folgt die Methode dem Ansatz von Open Innovation, was bedeutet, das die Organisation aussenstehende Menschen in den Innovationsprozess einbezieht.
Lead User sind fortschrittliche Anwender:innen beziehungsweise Tüftler:innen, Pionier:innen auf ihrem Gebiet, die Bedürfnisse verspüren, bevor sie die breite Masse erst morgen haben wird. Lead User ziehen einen besonders großen Nutzen aus der Innovation, weil sie unzufrieden mit den bestehenden Produkten oder Prozessen am Markt sind und sie profitieren daher stark von einem neuen Produkt, einer neuen Entwicklung, einer Innovation.
In Lead User Projekten werden Durchbruchsinnovationen geschaffen mit denen Produkte und Prozesse den zukünftigen Bedürfnissen der Anwender:innen bestmöglich entsprechen.
The lead user method
Professor Eric von Hippel developed the lead user method in the 1980s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The method is based on the empirical finding that innovations are frequently not initiated by manufacturers, but rather that users are the driving force behind them. These innovation activities are not assigned randomly – they are concentrated on a specific group of highly advanced users and customers: the so-called lead users.
The objective of the lead user method is to develop products, processes, services, or business models that are especially focused on the market, customers, and end users. The procedure follows the open innovation approach, meaning that the organization includes third parties in the innovation process.
Lead users are advanced users and inventors or pioneers in their field. Lead users draw a great deal of utility out of the innovation, because they are dissatisfied with the existing products or processes on the market.
We use this inventiveness in lead user projects. Breakthrough innovations emerge as a result, with which products and processes meet the future requirements of customers and users in the best possible way.
