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Users as Innovators - Why Open Source Works

Posted by timothy on from the pave-your-path-where-the-grass-is-bent dept.

eaglemoon writes "Many people still have difficulty understanding why open source software projects are successfull. The Boston Globe has an interview with Eric von Hippel, a Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, on users as innovators. In his new book, von Hippel, discusses how open source projects draw on the creativity of ''lead users," who are often ahead of the curve on technology and marketplace trends. Von Hippel shows the trend already is more advanced than is generally known, and users often freely reveal their innovations for the common good. The social efficiency of a system in which individual innovations are developed by individual users is increased if users somehow diffuse what they have developed to others.....he also notes that the transition to user-centered innovation is hard for some companies to swallow.
The online version of the book is available under a Creative Commons license."

7 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Lead Users by pyrrhonist · · Score: 4, Funny
    In his new book, von Hippel, discusses how open source projects draw on the creativity of "lead users," who are often ahead of the curve on technology and marketplace trends.

    I'm made of copper, you insensitive clod!

    --
    Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
  2. Re:MIT by AvantLegion · · Score: 4, Funny
    >> PLEASE, can we get some opinions from some other schools please. There is nothing this professor is saying that hasn't already been said a thousand times on slashdot.

    Indeed. Quotes from my professors that are regularly on Slashdot:

    "In our discussion on type systems last session, we noted that, in Soviet Russia, systems type YOU!"

    "A lambda term is in normal form if it contains neither a redex nor hot grits."

    "In Korea, only old people use the nameless lambda calculus."

    "An ALU may consist of an adder, a block carry circuit, an input circuit, ?????, and profit."

  3. Re:MIT by katana · · Score: 3, Funny
    Anyone else absolutely sick of MIT?

    Yes. Harvard.

  4. because they want to do it by Eternally+optimistic · · Score: 2, Funny

    Open source software is made by a bunch of people who actually want to do the work. Some of it turns out to be good. Perhaps it is not obvious to management types that people can do good work without threat of punishment.

    --
    What keeps me going is my inertia.
  5. Re:the user's perspective by zobier · · Score: 2, Funny
    Users will have a perspective on products that the programmer never will--namely the perspective of someone who *doesn't understand* how the application works!
    What are you talking about I know plenty of developers who don't understand how the application works!
    --
    Me lost me cookie at the disco.
  6. I find it amusing.... by Ponzicar · · Score: 2, Funny

    that this professor is just one dyslexic capitalist away from being dubbed "Von Hippie".

  7. Re:SI units please: by Truth_Quark · · Score: 2, Funny
    I was really after the SI units for "attractiveness of innovation" and "lead-user-ness".

    The data was collected by a reference paper, but I do wonder what the international standard of lead-user-ness is. For the projects in the study lead-user-ness ranges from 5 to 14 on a continuous scale.

    I have felt for some time that "attractiveness" should be measured in Helen-of-Troys out of a possible maximum of 1000 ships - perhaps a supset of this scale could be used for "attractiveness of innovation". Maybe out of 1000 of those little wind-generators on the mast.

    The issus with this is the standardization of those little generators. If you use a modern, smaller one, you only get y = 1.32 + .23x - with smaller coefficients if you have a generator with solar capability.