The authors propose that need for cognition, an individual’s tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking, is associated with individual innovation behavior. Moreover, drawing on an interactionist ...perspective, the authors suggest that need for cognition becomes more important when individuals face lower job autonomy and time pressure in their work. This is because, when these job characteristics are low, there is no contextual driving force for individual innovation, so personality has a stronger influence. In a multisource study of 179 employees working in a Dutch research and consultancy organization, the authors’ expectations were largely supported. They found that need for cognition was positively associated with peer-rated innovation behavior, as were job autonomy and time pressure, even when controlling for openness to experience and proactive personality. Furthermore, the relationship between need for cognition and innovation behavior was strongest for individuals with low job autonomy and low time pressure and indeed was nonexistent at high levels of these contextual variables. This study, therefore, suggests that context can substitute for an individual’s need for cognition when it comes to individual innovation.
In a first survey of its type, we measure development and modification of consumer products by product users in a representative sample of 1,173 UK consumers age 18 and older. We estimate this ...previously unmeasured type of household sector innovation to be quite large: 6.1% of UK consumers-nearly 2.9 million individuals-have engaged in consumer product innovation during the prior three years. In aggregate, consumers' annual product development expenditures are more than 1.4 times larger than the annual consumer product R&D expenditures of all firms in the United Kingdom combined. Consumers engage in many small projects that seem complementary to the innovation efforts of incumbent producers. Consumer innovators very seldom protect their innovations via intellectual property, and 17% diffuse to others. These results imply that, at the country level, productivity studies yield inflated effect sizes for producer innovation in consumer goods. They also imply that existing companies should reconfigure their product development systems to find and build on prototypes developed by consumers.
This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.
We take a first step to explore how organizational factors influence individual entrepreneurial behavior at work, by investigating the role of job design variables. Drawing on multiple–source survey ...data of 179 workers in a Dutch research and consultancy organization, we find that entrepreneurial behavior, indicated by innovation, proactivity, and risk–taking items, is a higher order construct. Job autonomy is positively related with entrepreneurial behavior, as well as its innovation and proactivity subdimensions, while job variety is not. This suggests that interventions related to the vertical scope of jobs will promote entrepreneurial behaviors more than horizontal job expansion.
The current paper is concerned with exploring the role of absorptive capacity in extending the reach of innovation-related collaboration in high technology small firms. Drawing on survey data from a ...sample of 316 Dutch high-tech small firms, engaged in 1245 collaborations, we explore the relationship between R&D expenditure and distance to collaboration partners. In general terms, we find most partners to be ‘local’. However, controlling for a variety of potential influences, higher R&D expenditure is positively related to collaboration with more distant organizations. The implications of our results for policy, practice and future research are discussed.
The sucrose preference test (SPT) measures the relative preference of sucrose over water to assess hedonic behaviors in rodents. Yet, it remains uncertain to what extent the SPT reflects other ...behavioral components, such as learning, memory, motivation, and choice. Here, we conducted an experimental and computational decomposition of mouse behavior in the SPT and discovered previously unrecognized behavioral subcomponents associated with changes in sucrose preference. We show that acute and chronic stress have sex-dependent effects on sucrose preference, but anhedonia was observed only in response to chronic stress in male mice. Additionally, reduced sucrose preference induced by optogenetics is not always indicative of anhedonia but can also reflect learning deficits. Even small variations in experimental conditions influence behavior, task outcome and interpretation. Thus, an ostensibly simple behavioral task can entail high levels of complexity, demonstrating the need for careful dissection of behavior into its subcomponents when studying the underlying neurobiology.
•The scope of innovation by consumers for their own use is substantial, but only a fraction diffuse beyond the originators.•Value that others may gain can often not be internalized by ...consumer-developers, who therefore do not invest effort in supporting diffusion.•We document a novel type of market failure by showing that more generally valuable innovations are not more likely to diffuse “for free” than less valuable ones.
Empirical studies have shown that millions of individual users develop new products and services to serve their own needs. The economic impact of this phenomenon increases if and as adopters in addition to the initial innovators also gain benefits from those user-developed innovations. It has been argued that the diffusion of user-developed innovations is negatively affected by a new type of market failure: value that others may gain from a user-developed product can often be an externality to consumer-developers. As a result, consumer innovators may not invest in supporting diffusion to the extent that would be socially optimal. In this paper, we utilize a broad sample of consumers in Finland to explore the extent to which innovations developed by individual users are deemed of potential value to others, and the extent to which they diffuse as a function of perceived general value. Our empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that a market failure is affecting the diffusion of user innovations developed by consumers for their own use. Implications and possible remedies are discussed.
User innovations are widely present in the household sector, but often do not spread to others because users lack incentives to sell and/or share. Previous studies of what alleviates this diffusion ...problem were empirically driven, while a theoretical framework that integrally explains alleviating factors is missing. We fill this void by proposing an identity perspective based on users' eudaimonic motivation: diffusion efforts may be in line with users' aspired ‘daimon’ or true self. An identity perspective unites previously unconnected alleviating factors (commercial motivation, community involvement, common cause motivation) and enables theorizing about interaction effects. We identify three types of user innovator identity with potential relevance for diffusion: professional, community-oriented and societal. Survey data of 999 Chinese user innovators confirm that aspired professional identity is associated with sales effort, and community-oriented and societal identity with free sharing. Moreover, community-oriented and professional identity interact positively with selling effort. We conclude that an identity perspective enhances our understanding of the diffusion of user innovations to everyone's benefit.
•Eudaimonic motivation concepts have not been applied to user innovation before.•Their aspired identities may trigger user innovators to put effort into diffusion.•Professional identity is associated with effort to sell user innovations.•Community-oriented and societal identity are associated with free sharing.•Positive interaction between professional and community-oriented identity with selling effort.
•Diffusion of generally valuable consumer innovations fails due to lacking incentives.•This market failure is confirmed with data of 164 German consumer innovators.•Individual, object and process ...factors may alleviate the market failure.•Community engagement during the innovation process helps to secure first adoption.•Entrepreneurial experience and product newness tentatively help for diffusion.
Consumers innovate usually for non-commercial motives. They generally lack incentives to diffuse, and this is expected to hamper first adoption – even if consumer innovations are valuable to many other people. We confirm this market failure with survey data of 164 German consumer innovators. First adoption by others is unrelated with general use value, unless the innovator is highly willing to commercialize. Next, as classical diffusion theory does not explain when consumer innovations become available to others, we propose an individual-object-process (I-O-P) framework to study factors alleviating the market failure. The viability of the framework is explored by studying the moderating role of entrepreneurial experience (I), product newness (O) and community engagement during the innovation process (P). First adoption of generally valuable consumer innovations is enhanced when a community was involved. We also find tentative evidence for a moderating role of entrepreneurial experience and product newness.
Household sector innovation is significant in scale and scope. Thus far, it has been studied in isolation and with mixed evidence regarding the role of personal resources (consumers' income and ...discretionary time). We recognize that household sector innovation is embedded in the broader phenomenon of do-it-yourself (DIY) by consumers, as the literature reveals conceptual similarities, parallel motivations, and antecedents. The main distinction is that, whereas DIY goods may replicate existing products, household sector innovation is restricted to goods embodying a novel function. We explore if studying household sector innovation and DIY in an integrated framework helps to resolve previous inconsistent evidence on the role of personal resources. Based on a neoclassical model in which agents optimize their time allocation, we hypothesize that income and discretionary time positively relate to their DIY output, but—given that agents develop DIY goods—we hypothesize that income negatively relates to innovation. For discretionary time, we formulate a research question regarding its effect on innovation which we answer empirically. Our findings suggest that consumers with more personal resources derive more process benefits from DIY but that these benefits crowd out individuals' focus on the function of their objects, hence, the likelihood of developing innovations. Survey data from the United Arab Emirates (n = 2728) confirm our suppositions, showing that the relationship between personal resources and household sector innovation is more refined than suggested by previous studies.
•Household sector (HHS) innovation is embedded in citizens’ do-it-yourself (DIY) production.•Integrally studying HHS innovation and DIY sheds new light on antecedents.•Resource-rich people (income, discretionary time) are more likely to develop DIY goods.•Given that people develop DIY goods, resource-poor people are more likely innovators.
User innovations are often valuable to other people, but fail to diffuse because users lack incentives to do a dissemination effort. Past research recognized that users sometimes spur diffusion ...themselves, and that producers may search for and commercialize user innovations. In this study we identify a third type of actor who fills the void between initial solution and broad dissemination - without being a potential user or commercial diffuser himself. We document a case study at an academic hospital where workers created and institutionalized a system to support and disseminate user innovations developed by nurses. They proactively created a network with makerspace facilities, without being asked or instructed to do so. These workers fulfilled a disseminator role: they continued to develop user innovations to make adoption easy, explored commercial pathways, mobilized peer demand, and created favorable project conditions. Interestingly, the diffusion system was institutionalized by job crafting, securing budgets, embedding diffusion activities in the organization chart, and developing strategic relationships. Disseminators were motivated by self-actualization, enjoyment, reputation advancement, and altruism towards the nursing community; they strived to become ‘heroes of diffusion’. We conclude that a disseminator role in-between user innovators, and peer adopters and commercial producers, represents an alternative mechanism for user innovations to spread widely, and opens opportunities for new research.
•User innovators lack incentives to make their solutions widely available.•Third actors, other than users and producers, sometimes proactively bridge the diffusion gap.•Disseminators conduct diffusion activities, and create and institutionalize diffusion systems.•They are motivated by self-actualization, fun, reputation, and altruism; to become diffusion heroes.
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