l of MarktMg Maiutgenrnt, 1986, 2, No.

2, 10<t-123

Innovation and Re-Innovation: A Role for the User

Roy Rothwell
Leader, Design and Innovation Management Group, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex

Various models of the innovation process, from the "traditional" to the more recent, are
examined in this paper which focuses on the implications for the role of the user in the
innovation process. The author points out the need for greater recognition of the
importance of users as active participants in the innovation process. In many industrial
sectors user-need specification and product development involve more than simply a
passive role for the user and innovatory success is associated with active user involvement
in product specification, design and development.

INTRODUCTION

All modern studies of the technological innovation process emphasise the

importance of demand specification to innovatory success. In other words,
and not surprisingly, it is necessary for product characteristics to match the
"user needs" profile (Rothwell, 1977a; Cooper, 1980). This implies the need
for a strong marketing effort on the part of would-be innovative firms; the
need to scan the marketplace in order to establish an optimum and
representative set of user need specifications as the basis for the new product
design brief
This market scanning process, the traditional task of the marketer, in a
sense implies a passive, or at best a reactive, role for the user; he simply
responds to the questions of the marketer who then goes away and
establishes the appropriate design brief on his behalf In some market areas,
for example, in the consumer products area, users might very well play a
simple reactive role. In other areas, however, for example industrial goods,
the user might play a much more active role, not just in user need
specification, but also in the technological development process itself Some
evidence for the importance of users as active participants in the innovation
process will be briefly presented below.

MODELS OF THE INNOVATION PROCESS

We will begin by describing a number of "traditional", and several more

recent models of the innovation process, and in particular their implications
for the role of the user in innovation.
109
110 ROY ROTHWELL
(i) Technology-pash
Early models of the innovation process emphasised the causal roie of
sciendfic and technoiogical advance and were generally iinear. These can be
summarised by Figure 1 (a) which is the so caiied "technoiogy-push" modei
of innovation. According to this modei, discoveries in basic science lead
eventuaiiy to industriai technologicai deveiopments which iead in turn to a
flow of new products and processes on to the marketpiace. This modei
impiies a more or iess passive roie for the user, and the marketpiace is
simply a receptacle for the resuits of firms' scientific and technoiogicai
endeavours.
To be successfui on the basis of the modei, the firm requires mainiy to
keep in contact with deveiopments in basic science and to maintain a
substantial technoiogicai deveiopment capabiiity. The basic premise under-
iying the modei is that "more R&D" is equivalent to "more innovation".
Whiie some notabie deveiopments have occurred following the sequence
described in Figure 1, e.g. X-ray photography in medicine, in generai it is
more iikeiy to result in the production of "better mousetraps'. Even today
pubiic policies towards technological deveiopment appear, impiicitiy at
ieast, to foiiow the technoiogy-push model: they emphasise suppiy-side
factors (R&D) and iargeiy ignore the roie of demand (market) factors.

(a) SCIENCE DISCOVERS, TECHNOLOGY PRODUCES, FIRM MARKETS

Basic Applied Manufactifting Marketing

Sctence Science and
Engtneeiing

(b) NEED PULLS, TECHNOLOGY MAKES, FIRM MARKETS

Market Development Manufacturing Sales

Need

Source: Rothwell (1983).

FIGURE 1 Two extreme models of the innovation process—the "traditional" views.

(ii) Need-puU
From the mid-1960s onwards, iargeiy as the resuit ofa growing number of
empiricai studies and descripdons of actuai innovations, the roie of feit need
began to be emphasised. One of the most wideiy quoted statistics in the
innovation iiterature during that period was that "75 percent of successful
innovations arise in response to the recognition of a market need" (See
Tabie 1). This was interpreted into the iinear "need-puii" modei of
innovation shown in Figure I(b). According to this modei, innovations arise
 INNOVATION AND RE-INNOVATION 111
1 ABLE 1
Summary of fmdings on source of stimulation for innovation in eight empirical
studies.

Proportion of innovations Proportion from

from market, mission or technical
Study production needs ("„) opportunities {%)

Baker et al. 77 23
Carter and Williams 73 27
Goldhar 69 31
Sherwin and Isenson 66 34
Langrish et al. 66 34
Myers and Marquis 78 22
Tannenbaum el at. 90 10
Utterback 75 25

Source: Voss, C. A., 1984.

as the result of perceived and often clearly articulated needs, a good

illustrativ e example being radar.
The adoption of the need-pull model led to the question being asked in
some firms, "who needs R&D?" and in particular "who needs research?"
After all, if ideas for innovations flow freely from the marketplace, then
perhaps only a limited development capability is necessary to transform
them into new products. This, of course, was an extremely short-sighted and
misguided view since, when major market changes occurred, or when
.significant new technological capabilities emerged, the firm could find itself
in the position of being unable to respond. Firms adopting this approach
ran the risk of being Iocked-in to a regime of incremental innovation in
existing areas as a result of innovating only to meet gradually changing user
specifications. In addition, this model generally assumes a traditional
"reactive" role for the user, implying simply the need to scan the
marketplace in order to establish the modified design specification.

(iii) The coupling model

During the past decade or so, both the pure technology-push and need-pull
models of innovation have increasingly been regarded as extreme and
untypical examples of a more genera! process of coupling between science,
technology and the marketplace (Mowery and Rosenberg, 1978). It is now
generally accepted that more R&D has not necessarily resulted in more
innovation and, as Hayes and Abernathy (1980) have demonstrated,
overemphasis on current market needs has indeed led in some cases to a
regime of incrementalism and lack of radical innovations. In fact, in the
early inventive phases of a radical innovation, users may have only a
112 ROY ROTHWELL
glimmering of the eventual potendai of the new deveiopment. "The Wright
Brothers' proving of the feasibiiity of powered manned flight, for exampie,
did not and couid not sdmulate even the most visionary of onlookers to see
what eventuai user needs wouid be iike for a commercial mail or passenger
airiine service" (Rothweli and Gardiner, 1985).
A more representative modei of the innovation process in practice is given
in Figure 2. This is the so-caiied "coupiing modei". According to this
modei, innovation can be regarded as a iogicaliy sequentiai, though not
necessarily continuous process, that can be subdivided into a series of
functionally separate but interacting and interdependent stages. The overaii
pattern of the innovation process can be thought of as a compiex net of
communication paths, both intra-organisadonal and extra-organisational,
linking together the various in-house functions and linking the firm to the
broader scientific and technicai community and to the marketplace. In other
words, the process of innovadon represents the confiuence of technological
capabiiities and market needs within the framework of the innovadng firm.

New need Needs of societv and the market place

\

i
Idea
1 1 1 '
Marketing
\

conception Deveiopment Manufacturing fMarket

and saies

I 1 1 1 1
technological State-of-the-art rn technology and production techniijues
capability

Source: Rothwell and Zegveld (1985).

FIGURE 2 Interactive model of the innovation process.

The coupiing modei suggests that it is not particuiariy cruciai whether

the new product concept arises as the resuit of the emergence of a new
technoiogicai capabiiity or because ofthe recognition ofa new market need
(or, as is most iikeiy the case in pracdce, a combinadon of both). The
important factor is that the firm coupies technoiogicai capabiiity to market
needs at the eariiest possibie stage. Moreover, as the project deveiops, the
firm remains coupled to the marketpiace in order that changing market
requirements can be detected and fed in to the development process to
produce a modified design brief. Whiie in this model the user has some
involvement throughout the course of the deveiopment in specifying his
changing requirements to the innovator, a technicaiiy active user roie is not
necessarily implied.
 INNOVATION AND RE-INNOVATION 113
(iv) Re-innovation
The above models imply that innovation is in some sense a clearly bounded
process that terminates once the original new product reaches the market-
place. In practice, technological innovation is a dynamic, iterative process
rather than a one-off event. A successful new design represents only a
temporary balance between product characteristics and user requirements;
continued success requires frequent adjustments to this balance. Innovation
as an iterative design process is illustrated in Figure 3, which shows the
process of re-innovation to meet altered user need specifications.
Most marketers would accept that users can play an important role in re-
innovation. They feed back information to the manufacturer concerning
changing conditions of use, greater ease of use, improved serviceability and
so on. In general, however, the bulk of real technological change is
generally assumed to continue to arise as the result of the manufacturers'
own R&D activities.

Bnicidn
concept

Design
for
demonstration

Mkt

Inventton Innovation L Re-innovaiion

Practical and material Commercial ej^ioitation Altered product

embodiment of the Design for maritetabte of the basic idea or artd proems
basic idea or concept pTDduction concept i e. specific specifications
product characteristics e.g. impfoved
at 8 particutar price performance at
lower cost
Key

Patents, registered designs and trade marks

taken out fof jvotectron

Source: Rothwell and Gardiner (1983).

FIGURE 3 Invention, innovation and re-in nova tion.

USER-PRODUCER LINKS AND SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION

In this section the results of a number of empirical studies will briefly be

reviewed that have illustrated the importance of user-producer linkages to
successful innovation. The first of these, a European-wide study that was
114 ROY ROTHWELL
undertaken in the mid-1970s (Rothweii, 1976a), deals with a traditiona!
sector of industry, textiie machinery.
Textile machinery is a sector in which British international competitive-
ness deciined markedly from the iate i 950s onwards. One of the reasons for
this decline was a lack of embodied technoiogicai change in British
manufactured machinery. Moreover, even where firms had been innovadve,
their innovations often faiied satisfactoriiy to match user requirements. This
point is underlined in the data presented in Figure 4.

Important Verv important

I I

General charactenslics

Cheaper overall running costs

— 1 5

Cheaper overall instaNatton costs

—I 7
— —I B

Specific characteristics

Productrorr rate

Improves product quality

Reduced labour requirements

1 7

Purchase pirce

— H14

Reduce no of product operations

9

Key
Teictile machrnerv manufacturers

—— Textile machrnery users

FIGURE 4

The data in Figure 4 are taken from a comprehensive questionnaire

survey of UK textiie companies (users) and UK textiie machinery manu-
facturers (producers) (Rothweii, i977b), in which respondents were re-
quested to weight a iist of eighteen specific machinery characteristics and
nine rather more generai characteristics according to their degree of
importance, on a five point scale ranging from "not important" to "of
crucial importance". From these data the rank order of importance was
computed for each of the characteristics.
The bars on Figure 4 indicate the weighting or degree of importance
attached to two of the "general" characteristics and five of the "specific"
 INNOVATION AND RE-INNOVATION 115
characteristics by both users and producers, and the numbers indicate their
rank order of importance. It can be seen, in a number of instances, that
there is a notable mismatch in perception of importance weighting, rank
order of importance, or both. For example, while users and producers gave
the factor "production rate" equal ranking, users weighted it more highly
than producers; while both gave equal weighting to the factor "purchase
price", users ranked it well below producers.
Perhaps the most significant difference occurred with the general charac-
teristic "cheaper overall running costs", which was awarded a much higher
weighting by users. This, in effect, is a composite of a number of specific
factors including efficiency (reliability), production rate, labour require-
ment, purchase price and working life. Essentially, users were very much
more aware of the importance of total life cycle costs than producers who
were more concerned with one component of this—purchase price. The
point is, this, and other mismatches in perception could have been avoided
had producer companies established active collaboration with the user
during machinery' design and developtnent. Unfortunately, all too few
British companies involved the user in the design/developtnent process, user
involvement generally not occurring in any substantive sense until just prior
to, or following, commercial launch.
Not all British textile tnachiner)' companies were remiss in this respect,
howev er, and this is illustrated in Table 2 which shows patterns of external
collaboration during the production of 25 successful UK textile machinery
innovations. Of the 25 companies involved, 85 percent enjoyed external
collaboration during development, of which nearly 70 per cent was with
potential customers. Moreover, a number of companies interacted across
several stages of development and with several outside agencies. In all cases.

TABLE 2
Patterns of outside collaboration during the production of 25 successful
innovations introduced bv the UK textile machinerv' industr\\

, \ umber Percentage

Outside collaboration 21 84
No outside collaboration 4 16
Stage at which collaboration sought R & D 13
> 1
Prototype production 13
>4
Production 6 ~^ I
-> 1
Marketing and sales 1
Collaboration was with*
Customer 14 66
Other industry 5 24
Other 2 10

•Percentages calculated to nearest integer.

116 ROY ROTHWELL
especiaiiy those invoiving the user, the interacdon involved much more than
simpiy consuitation; in each case the user was an active partner in the actuai
development of the machine.
The importance of active customer involvement in machinery deveiop-
ment was much more wideiy acknowiedged in the considerabiy more
successfui West German and Swiss textiie industries, whose constituent
manufacturers had strong tradidons of invoiving users in their machinery
design procedures. A striking exampie of this was the enormously successfui
Sulzer weaving machine—the worid's first shuttleless loom—that passed
through ten prototype stages over many years before the commerciai
iaunch of the Mark 11 version. Throughout its deveiopment, the Suizer
ioom was tested regularly in the weaving mills of potential customers and it
was feedback from these that provided much of the impetus for continued
redesign (Rothweli, 1976b).
Further evidence supporting the importance of user-producer iinks comes
from a comparadve study of the UK and West German machine tool
industries by Parkinson (1982). Parkinson found a considerabiy greater
propensity on the part of the generaiiy much more successfui West German
machine tooi suppliers activeiy to invoive the user in the product design and
deveiopment process:
"In the West German companies in the sampie, customer invoivement
in the product design and deveiopment process was seen as axiomatic if
the company wanted to be successfui. In contrast, in the British
supplier companies, the prevailing attitude was not to involve the
customer in the process untii the product was put on the market".
Effectiveiy, whiie British users and suppiiers swapped commerciai data
(price, deiivery), the West German users and suppiiers swapped technical
and "user needs" data. A similar difference was evident between the British
and West German textile machinery industries in their relationships with
customers in the textiie sector.
Whiie it is important, where feasible, activeiy to invoive customers in the
design and deveiopment process it is, of course, important to interact with
customers who themseives are innovative and technicaiiy progressive. Where
the home user industry is generaiiy technicaiiy unprogressive or technicaiiy
non-demanding, this can present the manufacturer with considerabie prob-
iems. Such, in fact, was the case with the UK textiie industry during the
1950s and eariy i960s, much of which showed a marked reiuctance to adopt
innovative new machinery. This placed the UK textile machinery industry
at a marked disadvantage in reiation to its major West German competitors
who enjoyed an innovation-demanding home market.
Further evidence supfKirting the importance to suppiiers of the existence
of innovadve users comes from Parkinson's study cited above:
"West German customers tended to vaiue technicai attributes of the
machine tooi (inciuding sophisdcation) more than British customers,
 INNOVATION AND RE-INNOVATION 11 7
and were more likely to suggest ideas for product modification or
entirely new products to suppliers... Given that West German cus-
tomers appear to have a more positive attitude to new technology than
their British counterparts, it is clear that their role may be crucial in
the new product development efforts of their own domestic suppliers.
The comparative weakness of British customers appears to go some way
towards explaining the comparative weakness of their domestic
suppliers. (An active user may create an active supplier.)"
Essentially, what is required for successful innovation in the capital goods
sector is the establishment of a virtuous circle involving active collaboration
between innovative suppliers and innovation-demanding users, each partner
continually feeding performance information back to the other. Moreover,
this process should begin as early as possible in the product design and
development process.
User-producer interactions during innovation do not, of course, always
progress smoothly and harmoniously and, in the case of major and
expensive innovations, both partners can take considerable financial risks.
Such was the case with the development of the Boeing 747, which involved
intensive interaction between Boeing (the producer) and Pan Am (the user).
When Boeing and Pan Am jointly signed an agreement in December 1965
to develop and to operate respectively the 747, Boeing was comtnitted to a
S2,000 million development programme which would be lost if the 747 was
not a success, while Pan Am was committed to staged payments of $500
million for 25 aeroplanes, with 50% at least six months before taking
delivery of a single 747. Between signing of the original agreement and
delivery of the first 747, the specification changed considerably, e.g.
capacity from 350 seats to 374 seats and gross take-off weight from 550,000
lbs to 710,000 lbs. Gardiner and Rothwell (1985) described user/producer
interactions during this period as follows:
"Phase II in our robust design model is a period of design consoli-
dation which, for Boeing and Pan Am, turned out to be a four-year-long
'nightmare' rather than one of progressive and cooperative develop-
ment. The central problem was that as design detailing began the
proposed take-off weight for the 747 kept progressively increasing. In
turn, this resulted in reduced cruising speeds, shorter ranges and
reduced operating altitudes. During 1966 the initial cruising altitude
dropped from an earlier 35,000 feet, which put it above the then
existing 707s and DC-8s to just 33,000 feet, which put it back among
the more congested airlanes occupied by the 707s and DC-8s. By 1968
the take-off weight continued to increase and, when Pan Am began to
work out operating cost per seat-mile, the proposed 747 on longer
routes would have been more expensive to fiy than the already existing
long range versions of the 707 Boeing, and Pan Am were by then into
a prolonged period of contractual dispute involving a great variety of
proposals and counter-proposals. At one time or another there were up
ii8 ROY ROTHWELL
to seven different versions proposed of which oniy the 747-iOOB and
747-1 OOF were ever to emerge, and even then they had performance
specifications somewhat removed from those proposed during 1967 and
1968". (Gardiner and Rothweii, 1985).
Whiie the sometimes fraught relationship between Boeing and Pan Am
enjoyed a positive outcome, i.e. it resuited in the production of a highiy
successfui pas^senger aircraft, in some cases potentiai users can piay a
negative roie through resisting or retarding the introduction of innovations,
especiaiiy radical innovations. At the same time, as pointed out earlier, it
might not be possible to even begin sensibly to specify user requirements
during the eariy deveiopment stages of a radicai innovation. In such cases,
user invoivement emerges during the latter stages through, perhaps, ex-
perience gained in prototype tests or even in commerciai operadon. These
factors to some extent figured during the deveiopment of the Hovercraft.
"When Cockereli first began demonstrating his peripherai jet hover-
craft effect, there do not seem to have been any immediate or specific
users in mind... Mainiy this was a period of non-customer directed
experimentation. Because user needs and specifications were diffuse and
weakiy perceived, the design briefs and demonstrations tended to be
rather generaiised in nature. As the annular jet patent appiicadon was
being deveioped in the mid-1950s, the first potentiai user, in the form
of the British military, rather than being supportive at this eariy stage
in the deveiopment of a new technoiogy had, if anything, a rather
negative infiuence". (Rothweii and Gardiner, 1985).
Foiiowing a series of demonstrations proving the principie of hover flight,
and as the Hovercraft deveioped, the roie of user specifications was
increasingly important in shaping its design and performance targets:
"Having surmounted the initiai hurdie of demonstrating the commer-
ciai practicaiity of its radiai technoiogicai design, the roie of actuai
(and potentiai) hovercraft users became increasingiy important in
subsequent deveiopments. The eariy, rather generaiised, design concept
had to be made more specific to meet the requirements and specifi-
cations of a particuiar user or class of users. Once some producer/user
experience had accumuiated, this detaiied specification became even
tighter at the re-design stage when the design brief contained a number
of precise "user specific" targets, e.g. speed, capacity, capitai costs and
operating costs with, in addition, weii understood reiationships between
these target figures". (Rothweii and Gardiner, i985).

USERS AS INNOVATORS

It was, without doubt, the work of E. von Hippei (1976, 1978, 1979a)
which first demonstrated, in any systematic sense, that in certain sectors of
 INNOVATION AND RE-INNOVATION 119
industry users can play the major role in invention and early innovation.
Von Hippei's pioneering work covered four families of scientific instruments:
gas chromotography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry, ultraviolet
absorption spectrometry and transmission electronic microscopy. In each
case, the instrument was first developed by a user and later transferred to a
manufacturing company for commercial production. In addition, not only
did the user play the dominant role in invention, but he also played an
active part in re-innovation. Thus, from a total of 44 major improvements
to the instruments, customers were the source of 36 (80%) and, from a total
of 46 minor improvements, 34 (73%) derived from users.
On the basis of his research results, von Hippel postulated a customer-
active paradigm (CAP) and a manufacturer-active paradigm (MAP) for
industrial product idea generation; in the former the customer plays the key
product-initiating role, while in the latter he plays merely a reactive role
(von Hippei, 1979b).
In attempting to explain his results, von Hippel utilised the concept of
the appropriabiiity of innovation benefit as a predictor of the functional
locus of innovation. Commenting, for example, on the work of Berger
(1975) and Boyden (1976) who found, in the plastics and plastics additives
industries respectively, that all the innovations studied derived exclusively
from the manufacturer, he states:
"As noted earlier Berger and Boyden have, for example, sampled
plastics and plastics additives respectively and have found all of these
to have been developed by product manufacturers rather than by
product users. I suspect that further research would show this locus
explicable in terms of the ability of users and manufacturers to
appropriate output-embodied benefits from these categories of inno-
vations. A particular plastic or additive is typically not essential to
users since other materials exist which can do the job at a (usually
minor) cost premium. To the manufacturer, however, a plastics and
additives innovation which provides such a slight cost advantage might
mean that users of other materials (steel, aluminium, other plastics,
etc.) replace these with the innovative material and quickly become
major customers, thus allowing the innovator to capture significant
output-embodied benefit". (Von Hippel, 1979a).
While the appropriabifity of benefit undoubtedly is a crucial factor in
determining the functional locus of innovative activity, a second factor
should be added, that of the locus of state-of-the-art expertise. It is not, for
example, surprising that medical researchers are the source of a significant
percentage of medical instrument innovations (see below) since they are
involved in state-of-the-art medical research which often necessitates them
constructing new kinds of monitoring and measuring equipment (in col-
laboration, in the UK, with medical physicists and technicians). The same
is true of chemists in government and university laboratories, who often
need to invent and build new analytical equipment to further their
120 ROY ROTHWELL
pioneering research. Medical researchers are not, of course, normaily in the
business of instrument manufacture, and they can best appropriate the
benefits of their inventive acdvity through buying back professionaiiy
manufactured, easy to use and reiiabie instruments from manufacturers to
whom they have transferred their invendon. Licence income can aiso be
used to fund further research. The manufacturer, on the other hand,
appropriates the benefits of his design, engineering and manufacturing
efforts through saies receipts and increased market share. It wouid be
unusuai for the typicai instrument manufacturer to contain the ievel of
medical research skiiis necessary to enable him to perceive the need for, and
to make, the initial invention, although he can remain "plugged-in" to the
inventive, state-of-the-art medical researcher and udiise him as a continuing
resource in the process of re-innovadon.
In a recent articie in this Journai, Foxail el al. (1985) have extended von
Hippei's concept of a spectrum of user invoivement in product-initiation
ranging from the MAP (iow) to the CAP (dominant). The authors
proposed a CAP2 model in which the user piays an entrepreneurial roie in
the deveiopment of user-initiated products; they then iiiustrated this
through describing the business development activides of British Aerospace's
Warton Division. According to CAP2, the user piays an acdve part not oniy
in invention, but aiso in development of his invention for commerciai expioit-
ation, thus appropriadng internaiiy the benefits that wouid otherwise be
obtained by the manufacturer as in von Hippei's original CAP modei.
In a recent series of articies Shaw (1985, 1986a, 1986b) has described the
resuits of a detaiied research project into user-producer interactions in the
UK medical equipment industry. He found, from a sampie of 34 inno-
vations, that 26 (76%) were deveioped through "muitipie and continuous"
user-manufacturer interaction, resulting in 22 (65%) being successfui, one
too eariy to judge and three being faiiures. Moreover, aii the faiiures were
due to the unsadsfactory technicai performance of the equipment, user-
needs being appropriately specified in each case. According to Shaw, "this
79% success rate far exceeds the 55 to 64% success rates found by
researchers in other industries and the degree of transfer of sociai benefit to
private innovadon benefit is much higher".
In Shaw's sampie of medicai equipment innovadon, user-invoivement in
most cases continued after the transfer of the initiai device to the manu-
facturer. This inciuded joint prototype deveiopment and testing, user-
evaiuation and assistance with marketing. In a number of cases, presdgious
medicai researchers (inventive users) often provided favourable pubiicity for
the innovations by presendng the resuits of research (using the innovadons)
to national and intemationai meetings. In this respect, they were seen as
"honest brokers" by their peers, who were aii potential customers.

DISCUSSION

The innovadon iiterature strongly underlines the fact that a significant

 INNOVATION AND RE-INNOVATION 121
percentage of unsuccessful innovations fail because the innovator has not
succeeded in satisfactorily establishing an appropriate set of user specifications
and in interpreting these in the design of his new equipment. In many
industrial sectors, user-need specification and product development involve
more than sitnply a passive role for the user, and innovatory success is
associated with active user involvement in product specification, design and
development. Uset^ also have an important role to play in the process of re-
innovation. Moreover, it is users who are themselves technically-progressive
and innovation-demanding who have the greatest potential in this respect.
In some product areas, empirical evidence points to an inventive role for
the user, who in this case is the primary source of the basic technological
know-how. In areas characterised by user-invention, there are obvious
advantages to both partners. On the side of the manufacturer, for example:
user needs are effectively built-in to the invention; R&D is effectively
subsidised; the user plays a marketing role through the dissemination of
results obtained using the equipment; and the user plays an important role
in demonstrating the effectiveness of the equipment which, because of his
active role in its development, he uses optimally right from the start. On
the side of the user: he obtains well engineered and reliable equipment built
to satisfy his requirements; he gains royalties on sales to fund further
research/development; and first use of the equipment enables him to gain a
research lead over his peers.
The potential ability of the user to play an important role in the re-
innovation process has important implications for product design. Specifi-
cally, it would seem sensible for manufacturers to design products that are
amenable to adaptation and improvement by innovative users, and this
point was illustrated in an important piece of research by von Hippel and
Finkelstein (1979):
"We therefore decided to explore our speculation that different types of
functionally similar products (here, different types of automated clinical
chemistry analyser) could show significant differences in the innovation
role of the user by comparing extant user test development activity
involving different types of automated clinical analyser".
Von Hippel and Finkelstein compared, in detail, two chemical analysers;
the Du Pont ACA and the Technicon SMAC. They found that of 18 new
chemical test methods offered commercially by Du Pont, all had been
developed in-house. In the case ofthe Technicon analyser, however, 74% of
20 new test methods had been developed by users. The principal reason for
this difference lay in certain design features of the Du Pont equipment
which militated against user-test-method developments, notably the design
of its reagent system, which was much less amenable than its Technicon
counterpart to user-adaptation. In terms of hardware-embodied innovations
(equipment improvements), the single equipment improvement identified in
the Du Pont analyser (as well as the original innovation itself) was
produced in-house. In the case of the Technicon analyser, the original
122 ROY ROTHWELL
innovation and 46% of important improvement innovadons were made by
the user.
The lesson is ciear. Not oniy shouid wouid-be innovators acdveiy invoive
the user in product specification, design and deveiopment; not oniy shouid
they seek in pardcular to invoive technicaiiy progressive users; but they
should also offer product designs that are user-fiexible. Manufacturers
ignore this message at their peril.

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