From an outlook of the definitions given by Eric Von Hippel and other literatures, User Innovation is an innovation based on the creation novel products or refinement of existing products by users, which according to most articles (users) are only keen on benefitting from utilizing their new products or modifications without having a vivid intention for profit. This in particular can be likened to open innovation. So are there any differences between User Innovation and Open Innovation?
The argument behind "user innovation" is that ideas for novel, improved, or refined products often originate from intermediate users (user firms) or consumers (individual end-users or user communities), who independently develop offhand versions of original products to better serve their needs; logically, the argument runs, it would be in the interest of suppliers (manufacturers or producers) to discover, polish, and capitalize on these user innovations. User innovation intuits that manufacturers or producers should, with "open innovation", let users drive innovation, this to synergize (or at least complement but not necessarily replace) what innovations they generate in their laboratories.
PS: Open innovation is the purposeful management of knowledge flows across organizational boundaries to accelerate internal innovation and expand markets for external use of innovation.
User Innovation can be seen as a technique for gathering important information or hidden gems underlying the decision-makers own subjective logic about the phenomenon of interest. Hence, you spend time on observing and empathizing with the user to truly understand their needs and requirements. Thence, you're using the user as a channel for knowledge inflows to improve the bird-in-hand continuously.
Contrary, Open Innovation is a much broader concept. Some might even say it's a paradigm. It emphasis an open approach to social collaboration and engagement with external stakeholders, e.g. universities, companies etc. Hence, the development process benefit from a mutually investigation upon the matter of interest. Therefore, Open Innovation is about both inflows and outflows of knowledge sharing to expand the knowledge boundaries that one company might possess.
Firstly, they are entirely different mindsets. Note that Open Innovation is one where innovation is undertaken as a cultural collaborative approach as opposed to innovation being a process. This means, it purports that innovation is open to all aspects of an organization where contributions from a vast array of sources are acceptable (that traditionally will not be possible). It is, in the end, a way to end bottlenecks and pockets-based sources of innovation and make innovation more emergent.
You can refer to the following to know more about Open Innovation:
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-era-of-open-innovation/
User Innovation is a completely different strategy because it emphasizes competitive advantages a company has in the market place. If the value proposition has to be used by specific end users, this approach involves the end users in suggesting ways in which these products/services can be bettered. This is expected to add value to the product and the end users are thus equal stakeholders in the creation of value - this process also improves a company's market positioning.
You may read more about it here:
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-user-innovation-revolution/
So, I suggest that Open Innovation is one that is emphasized for an organizations' implicit cultural needs whilst User Innovation is an explicit process, more externally oriented to align users as stakeholders in the processes of value creation.
Hope this helps.
Good definitions. What would you call an innovation initiated by individual people or local communities that they produce with local non-commercial organizations to solve local problems by launching novel services or processes to save a lot of public money?
Thank you all for your input. Your responses really clarified the differences between both concepts.
@Laura-Maija Hero: From my knowledge, I think that type of innovation is mostly regarded as Frugal Innovation, Grassroots Innovation, or Gandhian Innovation. The first chapter of the book "Inspiring & Executing Innovation" lays emphasis on this.
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