In a world of continuous commercialization and patenting of all innovations, even those needed to treat very serious diseases, the lion’s share of the scientific field, composed of eminent experts, advocates the free exchange of knowledge and synergy between manufacturing companies and recipient users of products for faster uptake. new technologies. Distinguished Economist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Eric von Hippelfounder of the “leading” user innovation theory, analyzes in “K” how recipient users of products contribute to the development of many innovations that are subsequently sold by large multinational companies.

Professor Hippel, author of the free books Democratizing Innovation and Free Innovation, criticizes the commercialization of knowledge as an end in itself and explains the importance of creating an ecosystem of free innovation and transforming the entrepreneurial spirit.

“For many years, right up to the advent of the digital age and the Internet age, product companies had a great innovative advantage over consumers who wanted to develop products that meet their own needs. Manufacturers had specialized equipment and dedicated innovation teams, and thus could develop products that individual users could not afford to develop.

Today, this picture has completely changed. Thanks to the Internet, “primary” users interested in developing something new for themselves can easily come together and create a virtual team of experts, which will consist of the same or more experts than the innovation teams of manufacturing companies. User groups also now have free access to digital design tools that are shared under open access policies, including advanced digital modeling and artificial intelligence tools. As a result, “primary” users are just as well equipped as manufacturing companies and can innovate, but at the same time they have a comparative advantage: they know their own needs much better than manufacturers. As a result, user groups today can develop new products and services at less or less cost than manufacturers, and consumer-developed products are often better suited to meet their needs.

Let me give you an example. Today, there are 9 million people in the world with type 1 diabetes, the most severe form of the disease. Medical device manufacturers developed products for these patients, but many of the things users really needed were missing despite their repeated requests. For example, it was not possible to remotely monitor the blood sugar levels of young children when they were away from their parents at school or during sleep, and it was not possible to automatically administer insulin according to user-defined rules. When asked about these improvements, the manufacturing companies said, “It’s hard – just wait patiently – we’ll do it,” and then they didn’t develop what patients needed.

When you design an artificial pancreas to help your child with type 1 diabetes, you don’t expect to be rewarded for selling the design.

Eventually, users lost their patience and formed the NightScout Product Development Partnership, which is made up of free volunteers. It is clear that the motto of this user group was: “We do not wait.” There were many highly skilled engineers in this group who had diabetes or children with diabetes. It took them only a few months to develop all the necessary modifications and innovations. They then offered their designs for free to any patient and producer who wanted them. Today, manufacturers have been motivated by what patients have done for themselves, and user innovation is now commercially available. Patient innovators are delighted with this result. At the same time, this clearly shows manufacturers that they are no longer the only innovators, which means that if they do not create what users need, then they will develop their own solutions.

– Well, they shouldn’t. They can ignore user innovation if they want to, but that would be financially unwise. Instead, they will have to learn how to work with innovative “primary” users. We have found that they will save money by doing this. Companies need to staff their market research departments, which have historically only dealt with unmet user needs. They need to change the search process so that they are looking for, among other things, original innovations that users – their potential customers – have developed for their own needs and tested in the field.

– Not guaranteed. In general, the interest in user innovation is that innovative users develop their new products for personal reward, not to sell them. So when you design an artificial pancreas to help your child with type 1 diabetes, you don’t expect to be rewarded for selling the design, but you are rewarded for creating a solution that will help your child. And when you collaborate with others, you also share your projects openly and freely.

Of course, this pattern goes far beyond medical equipment. In sports, skateboarders and mountain bikers collaborate to develop and test the gear they need. If a manufacturer wants to produce and sell what he has developed, fine. However, users prefer to spend their time enjoying sports rather than in the basement building a replica of the original design. And even if someone wanted to patent an innovation, they could not, because it was developed in collaboration with others, which means it was not clear who the “inventor” was. Of course, manufacturers can develop and patent improvements to users’ original designs.