Source of Innovation

It has long been assumed that product innovations are typically developed by product manufacturers. Because this assumption deals with the basic matter of who the innovator is, it has inevitably had a major impact on innovation related research, on firms' management of research and development, and on government innovation policy . However, it now appears that this basic assumption is often wrong.

In some fields, innovation users develop most innovations. In others, suppliers of innovation-related components and materials are the typical sources of innovation. In still other fields, conventional wisdom holds and product manufacturers are indeed the typical innovators.

New sources of innovation demand new management tools as well as new organization. Marketing research methods traditionally used to seek out and analyze user needs must be modified if they are to be effective for seeking out prototype products users may have developed. Similarly, tools for analyzing and possibly shifting the functional source of innovationare not in firms' current management inventory and must be developed.

Systematic and Integrated Product Development and Production Planning