Darren Sharp and Mandy Salomon have written a really interesting report on ‘user led innovation’, which uses Second Life as a case example.  As part of the research a number of leading experts were interviewed by the authors including: Eric von Hippel (Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management); Jimmy Wales (Founder of Wikipedia.org); Michel Bauwens (Founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives) and Mitch Kapor (Co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, venture capitalist and Chairman of Linden Lab).  The report can be downloaded here (opens a pdf file).

Tagged: Innovation

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills today has published its white paper on innovation which sets out what the Government will do to help ensure that innovation can flourish in the UK. The paper – ‘Innovation Nation’ can be downloaded from the DIUS website here (it opens a pdf file).

Tagged: Innovation

An article published earlier in the year looking at user driven innovation. The article written in the New York Times comments that “It is a difficult idea for research and development departments to accept, but one of his studies found that 82 percent of new capabilities for scientific instruments like electron microscopes were developed by users.”

Tagged: People

A range of papers, published by the DTI, which bring together thinking on innovation the service sector. The service sector in the UK accounts for approximately 75% of ‘output’. Read the report here (opens a PDF).

Tagged: Innovation and Service design

Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge has a short publication written by Professor Lynda M. Applegate on how ‘disruptive’ forces of change in the business environment can be used as a platform to help ‘jump start innovation’. Some of the forces of change noted in the article include:

• Technology
• Business models
• Industry dynamics
• Globalisation
• Outsourcing and off-shoring
• Regulatory, macroeconomic, political and societal

Read more on the Working Knowledge website.

Tagged: Innovation