Users usurp in-house R&D

This week’s Global Business programme on the BBC’s World Service is all about user-led innovation with reference to NESTA and with an extended interview with Eric Von Hippel, who spoke at the NESTA Connect launch. You can listen to it here.

In essence, he talks about what he describes as a revolution in innovation moving from in-house R&D (and marketing) departments, to users and customers. He draws out a series of implications for what this means for intellectual property right protection and business models. With the tools to innovate getting better/cheaper/easier (especially in the digital domain but increasingly in other areas as well) he describes his thesis of how innovation is being democratised.