In order to allow effective screening methods, user characteristics should be more tangible and point to users with unsolved needs that will become general in the marketplace and that have a high benefit when these needs were to be solved. Urban and von Hippel (1988) suggest three proxies to be used when looking for high expected benefit from solving a need, the second Lead User indicator besides being ahead of a market trend. These are: 1. evidence of user product development or modification (users that have innovated themselves), 2. user dissatisfaction with current products or solutions, and 3. speed of adoption of innovations. The first characteristic equates scanning for User Innovation or user modification, and is only applicable in domains where User Innovation is common and detectable. The second characteristic suggests a high usage experience with current products and solutions, and unmet or not sufficiently met needs. This dissatisfaction-criterion will reappear later in the context of service innovation when we discuss so-called defectors (cf. infra). The third characteristic makes a connection with the diffusion of innovations-paradigm of Rogers (cf. chapter 2) and suggests a link with the earlier adopters of innovations. This is supported by Gatignon and Robertson (1985) who argue that: “The key to diffusion of technological innovation may be in building the consumer knowledge and experience base for that type of technology”. If so, Lead Users, as early experiencers of new technologies, may play an important part in the diffusion process. Foxall (1994) supports this idea, arguing that for discontinuous innovations, Lead Users are crucial in providing detailed implementation
Page | 96
experience to later adopters and play a valuable function in supporting the communication network, but at the same time acknowledges that the psychographic characteristics of these Lead Users and user innovators are more complicated than generally described in management literature.
Lüthje (2003) ascribes the ability of Lead Users to be effective contributors to the innovation process to two major characteristics: adequate technological expertise and superior knowledge of the user domain ‘use experience’. The first characteristic can be seen as a prerequisite to the innovating user-criterion, as it requires some technological skills to be able to innovate or modify, whereas the second characteristic connects to the use diffusion paradigm, as it suggests that intensity of use is a characteristic of Lead Users. Franke et al. (2006) see both characteristics as part of the variable expertise, consisting of two elements: product or domain related knowledge, which also refers to more technological knowledge, and usage related knowledge, which refers to use experience.
Schreier and Prügl (2008) build further on this reasoning and introduce the idea of ‘Lead Userness’, or the degree to which a user can contribute to the innovation process. Besides consumer knowledge and use experience they add some characteristics that positively influence the likeliness to contribute to the innovation process: locus of control and innovativeness. They suggest these variables might be used as a proxy to identify Lead Users, so the higher an individual scores on ‘Lead Userness’, the more likely this individual is a Lead User. However, in this view, Lead Userness is still used as a dichotomous variable, where one is identified as a Lead User or not. Morrison et al. (2004) propose the LES- concept (Leading Edge Status) which also uses variables from the adoption diffusion framework: Rogers’ (1962) time of adoption and Midgley and Dowling’s (1978) innate or dispositional innovativeness. Schreier and Prügl (2008) conceived and tested their LES- construct, consisting of seven items, in a B2B setting, similar to the earliest accounts of Lead Users. LES appeared to be distributed normally in the studied population.
Bilgram et al. (2008) offer their own overview and summary of the characteristics that are beneficial with regards to user involvement in innovation:
(1) lead user criteria (being ahead of market trend, high expected benefit, user investment, user dissatisfaction & speed of adoption);
(2) user expertise (use experience, frequency of use, total period of use, number of different disciplines, product related knowledge, frequency of use of information sources, professional background or hobby);
(3) motivation (extrinsic & intrinsic motivation); (4) extreme needs and circumstances of product use;
Page | 97
(5) opinion leadership and word-of-mouth.
Somewhat similar, Piller and Ihl (2009) see three kinds of competences that users/customers should have for involvement in Open Innovation processes:
- Product competence (for need information): product related knowledge (technical) & use experience (extreme/deviant usage)
- Technical competence (for solution information): methodological knowledge, analogous market knowledge
- Leadership competence: especially relevant in Open Innovation settings with network collaborations in communities
Note that Piller & Ihl (2009) explicitly connect user involvement to Open Innovation, but do not include motivational characteristics.
Hoffman et al. (2010) also revisit the idea of a construct, measuring Lead Userness, but specifically for the domain of B2C innovation, introducing the concept of ‘emergent consumers’. Results of their study suggest that besides domain-specific Lead User- characteristics, other characteristics enhance the usefulness of customers in the innovation process, especially for generating new product or service ideas and developing them into concepts and prototypes. These unique personality traits and processing abilities for further developing successful product concepts include openness to new experiences and ideas; an intellective self-focus, or “reflection”; the ability to process information both verbally (rational style) and visually (experiential style); high levels of creativity; and optimism. This means that besides product- or domain-related characteristics, also personality-traits are introduced as variables to identify the ‘right’ users to involve in the innovation process. Besides being a Lead User, users also require certain personality traits that make them suited for involvement. Hoffman et al. (2010) also explicitly see emergent consumers as a different user type than Lead Users. However, recent research in the gaming domain has showed that emergent consumers and Lead Users in practice tend to show quite some overlap (Vernette & Hamdi-Kidar, 2014).
Lettl (et al., 2006a; 2006b; 2007) also drops the Lead User-concept, but rather argues that users with certain specific characteristics can contribute substantially to the development of radical innovation. He argues for the involvement of inventive users, which are users with a high motivation and with ‘extreme’ needs. These inventive users search in other domains to find ideas or solutions for their problems through analogical reasoning. Lettl also implicitly criticized the previous unclarity with regards to the type of information Lead Users or inventive users could provide, as he provided a ‘swell model’ which maps the desirable user characteristics according to the type of input that can be generated. The following characteristics are seen as beneficial in all stages or for all tasks: Motivation induced by
Page | 98
problems, openness and imagination capabilities. For more active contributions, a high level of expertise in the user domain, tolerance of ambiguity, resources for research and access to technological know-how are added to the equation. Finally, for active contributions in the technological domain (or solution information), technological expertise is required.
Lettl et al. (2006b) also come up with the interesting concept of so-called ‘lead manufacturers’. These are manufacturers that recognize the potential of emerging technologies earlier than others and therefore have an absorptive capacity for the contribution of entrepreneurial users. This also puts the attention towards the company engaging in User Innovation, which also bridges the gap with the Open Innovation paradigm, as User Innovation researchers generally only focus on user benefits from innovation. Note that these technology Lead Users are regarded as potential sources of radical ideas and of solution information. However, it is also unclear how these criteria are assessed with users. Therefore, in a later works Lettl (2007) also proposes a variation on the Lead User-method as he provides a search grid to scan for technology Lead Users as he calls them.
We notice an evolution in the literature on Lead Users, as authors started moving from the ‘classical’ Lead User definition, looking more into other characteristics and screening methods. This can also be explained by the fact that these Lead User methodologies appeared to be very cost- and time-intensive. A prototypical example is the widely cited 3M-case (von Hippel et al., 1999) where a Lead User project resulted in radical innovation, but also in the Lead User-approach being abandoned within the company because of the high investments. Another example can be found at Philips that launched its Lead User program with a lot of media attention16 surrounding the launch. However, the ‘http://www.leadusers.nl/’-site is
down for already quite some time now, which serves as another illustration that companies struggle with the successful management and implementation of distributed innovation. Therefore, User Innovation researchers started exploring other paths beyond the Lead User- approach.