Democratizing Innovation notes

I actually read Democratizing Innovation a while ago, having reviewed it back in 2013. But I realized that I hadn't put my notes up yet (just a review) so here they are. You can get the book for free as a pdf at the authors website.

“I first ask them how satisfied they are with their backpack. Initially, most say, “It's OK.” But after some discussion, a few complaints will slowly begin to surface (slowly, I think, because we all take some dissatisfaction with our products as the unremarkable norm.)”

But there are still a bunch of students who decide to make some sort of change to their backpack to make it at least a little better.

“adding more beta testers... increases the probability that someone's toolkit will be matched to the problem in such a way that the bug is shallow to that person.” (Raymond qtd in von Hippel.)
That is, adding more people who look at a problem increases the chances that the solution will be simple to someone. 

“The assets of some user will then generally be found to be a just-right fit to many innovation development problems.”

parallel between user-innovator and scholar-activist?

Userinnovation.mit.edu

In the early days of computing, it was common to freely share software and modifications to it. Almost as soon as the first firm restricted access to source code, counters including the General Public License started appearing. Some people started calling these “copyleft.”

hacker culture as an anarchist thing?

Conventional economic language talks about producers and consumers, supply and demand, but Weber notes that “the open source process scrambles these categories” (qtd in von Hippel) as users become part of the production process. He also suggests this integration could occur in other areas.

In open source, users are able to make complicated products themselves, like Firefox and Linux. (A user is kind of like a consumer, but it's a word that still works when the user is also the one making the thing.)

Experts in many fields form interest groups and informally help each other, freely revealing information in ways similar to that of open source processes. (von Hippel.)

Amabile, T. M. 1996. Creativity in Context. Westview.

Antelmon, Kristin. 2004. “Do Open Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?” College and Research Libraries 65, no 5: 372-382

Christensen, C. M. 1997. The Innovator's Dilemma. Harvard Business School Press.

Morris, A. D. and C. McClurg, eds. 1992. Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. Yale University Press.

Harhoff, D., J. Henkel, and E. von Hippel. 2003. Profiting from Voluntary Information Spillovers: How Users Benefit by Freely Revealing Their Innovations.” Research Policy. 35, no 10:1753-1769.

Mishina, K. 1989. Essays on Technological Evolution. PhD Thesis, Harvard University.

Von Hippel, E. 1976. The Dominant Role of Users in the Scientific Instrument Innovation Process. Research Policy 5, no 3: 212-39