Customer Reviews

The Sources of Innovation (The Executive Bookshelf from the Sloan Management Review)

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I was shocked that I am the first person to review this book because, by now, Prof. Eric von Hippel's book is a classic in the field of research into the causes of innovation. One of von Hippel's key arguments in this book -- as well as in subsequent research and publications -- is that a lot of innovation comes from users of products and services. As users find new uses or new needs for products and services, producers often innovate to meet those needs. While that may seem obvious, this book was one of the first works to verify it in a scientific and rigorous way. Much more surprising than the conclusion just presented is how von Hippel found that users themselves often made the modifications or created new products and processes that lead to innovation. This book belongs in the library of anyone interested in innovation: scientists, engineers, economists, and businesspeople.

I owe this book and his author a host of insights. It helped me to build a solid vocabulary to talk about innovation and inspired me to give a talk about Innovation at work. This research involves a lot of shoe-leather work and solid research. It helps us to answer the questions: Why innovate in the first place, what is innovation, and who are the sources of innovation? It addresses the hot question of breakthrough innovation in the context of Lead-user theory (where theory is not the 'theory' as in string theory but it is backed by solid work in the field.

This book is worth anyone's time to read. It is thought-provoking and mind-opening, especially in light of the repeated confirmations of the theories put forth in the book since it was published. Professor von Hippel's recent papers apply principles from this book to open-source software, high-performance windsurfing, and other areas. Almost prescient...