The Lead User Method and the Identification of Lead Users

Download or read book The Lead User Method and the Identification of Lead Users written by Gabriel Mohr and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The generation of innovation these days is an undeniably important task for every company. While for many years, innovation was considered to only stem from activities within the company, it has now become inevitable to include external knowledge sources. In this light, Eric von Hippel (1986) developed the so-called lead user method. This approach does not only look to the typical customer, but rather to those who lead the market with their needs and preferences. Consequently, lead users are frequently seen as a need-forecasting laboratory for market research. Despite the seemingly enormous potential, researchers often struggle to efficiently find and integrate these rare subjects. Thereby the two main search methods are screening as well as pyramiding. While the first one examines the whole population and subsequently selects the most appropriate one, the latter relies on receiving recommendations and hence is able to find the expert. Self-selection is another technique, which in this context has not yet been very well researched. In order to expand the knowledge, interviews with industry experts are conducted and additionally online questionnaires are distributed to simulate the three search techniques. Thus it is possible to explore the potential of the methods and to not only compare the success as well as efficiency of pyramiding and screening but to for the first time also include self-selection in the analysis. Thereby it is discovered that pyramiding as well as the newly added self-selection approach are two very efficient methods. The newly gained insights from this study increase the theoretical understanding and may help companies to identify lead users more easily by selecting a more efficient approach and thus faster achieve the goal of creating attractive innovations.