THE LESSON LEARNT FROM von Hippel. 1976. The dominant role of users in the scientific instrument innovation process

From 80% of 111 cases of scientific instruments, von Hippel found that the firms comprising the industry are not in themselves necessarily innovative but rather only provide the product engineering and manufacturing function for instrument users (e.g., scientists).

He analysed three kinds of innovations - basic innovations, major improvement, and minor improvement - according to the degree of the increase in functional utility. What makes an innovation major one is dependent on the point of view of the instrument user (p. 218). Only the first commercial introduction of an innovation is included in the sample; and is included only if it is commercially successful. By commercial success, it means that the invention is being offered for sale, by at least one commercializing company, from the time of innovation until the present day (p. 217).

Manufacturers may perform engineering work, but this work typically affects only the engineering embodiment of the user's invention, not its operating principles. Furthermore, nine of the ten profitable commercialized products were the result of user-dominated innovation processes. Users often have to take considerable initiative to bring a company to enter a product line new to it; and manufacturers who accepted the idea would often introduce a new instrument type to its established customer base (p. 223). The precommercial diffusion of significant user inventions via "homebuilt" replications of the inventor's prototype design by other users. This enshrines relatively minor activities within the manufacturer as the "innovation process" and relegates major activities by the user to the status of "input" to that process (p. 230).

Nevertheless, von Hippel, also hasten to add that "at this point we by no means wish to suggest that the patterns which we will describe are in any sense 'pure types' or represent an exhaustive listing of possible innovation patterns" (p. 231). The user invented because some needed the invention as a day-in, day-out functional tool for their work; and others were motivated to invent and reduce the invention to practice because how it performed was a useful means of testing and deepening their understanding of the principles underlying this operation (p. 235). A firm should not make use and would not find all the information from the users' invention useful or novel.