Shifting Innovation to Users Via Toolkits

TLDR

Traditional new‑product development first explores user needs, but this process is slow, costly, and increasingly strained by rapidly changing demands and the rise of markets of one, prompting the emergence of toolkits that transfer need‑related development to users. This paper investigates toolkits for user innovation, explaining their rationale and mechanisms. Empirical evidence from pioneering fields indicates that toolkit‑based approaches enable faster and lower‑cost development of custom products.

Abstract

In the traditional new product development process, manufacturers first explore user needs and then develop responsive products. Developing an accurate understanding of a user need is not simple or fast or cheap, however. As a result, the traditional approach is coming under increasing strain as user needs change more rapidly, and as firms increasingly seek to serve “markets of one.”Toolkits for user innovation is an emerging alternative approach in which manufacturers actually abandon the attempt to understand user needs in detail in favor of transferring needrelated aspects of product and service development to users. Experience in fields where the toolkit approach has been pioneered show custom products being developed much more quickly and at a lower cost. In this paper we explore toolkits for user innovation and explain why and how they work.