User Innovation in Sports
Excerpt from Sonali Shah's Open Beyond Software essay in Open Sources 2.0
Examples
Sonali Shah:
"Sports Equipment Innovation by Users & Their Communities
Both users and manufacturers contributed to the development of equipment innovations in the windsurfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding industries. Users are defined as individuals or firms that expect to directly benefit from a product or service by using it (von Hippel 1988). In contrast, manufacturers are those who expect to benefit from manufacturing and selling a product, service, or related knowledge; thus, firms, entrepreneurs, and inventors seeking to sell ideas, products, or services are all examples of manufacturers. To illustrate, snowboarders are users of snowboards. Firms such as Burton and Gnu are manufacturers of snowboards. An inventor who hears that there is a market for improved snowboard bindings and develops a new type of binding with the intent of patenting and licensing it is categorized as a manufacturer.
The User Innovation Process in Three Sports
This section describes the process by which users and their communities develop innovations. I begin with an example that illustrates this process. The following passage describes how Larry Stanley and the community of windsurfing enthusiasts around him innovated in the sport of windsurfing.
Mike Horgan and Larry Stanley began jumping and attempting aerial tricks and turns with their windsurfing boards in 1974. The problem was that they flew off in mid-air because there was no way to keep the board with them. As a result, they hurt their feet and legs, damaged the board, and soon lost interest. In 1978 West German Jurgen Honscheid came to participate in the first Hawaiian World Cup and was introduced to jumping. A renewed enthusiasm for jumping arose and soon a group of windsurfers were all trying to outdo each other. Then Larry Stanley remembered the Chip - a small experimental board that he had equipped with footstraps a year earlier for the purpose of controlling the board at high speeds - and thought:
It’s dumb not to use this for jumping.
News of the innovation spread quickly and instructions for how to make and attach footstraps to a windsurf board were shared freely. Later, Larry Stanley, Mike Horgan and a small set of windsurfing friends would begin the commercial production and sale of footstraps (and other innovations). Today the footstrap is considered a standard feature on windsurf boards.
This example illustrates three key components of innovation development by users. First, the act of use itself creates new needs and desires among users that lead to the creation of new equipment and techniques. Second, user cooperation in communities is critical to prototyping, improving, and diffusing solutions to those needs. Working jointly allows rapid development and simultaneous experimentation, however working jointly also requires that users openly reveal their ideas and prototypes to others. Third, user innovations – even after they have been freely revealed - are sometimes commercialized." (http://faculty.washington.edu/skshah/Shah%20-%20Open%20Beyond%20Software.pdf)