Leveraging users as innovators: Managing the creative potential of individual consumers

The special issue of the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management focuses on consumer users. Classic examples of user innovation by consumers, includes innovations in skateboarding, windsurfing, and snowboarding products, in which the proprietary offerings of firms are modified and improved upon by consumers, who then freely share these innovations with other consumers. A number of inter-related developments and forces have accelerated the phenomenon of consumers as user innovators. Consumers who innovate represent a tremendous opportunity for firms, while creating an enormous challenge to the firm and threaten its very existence in many ways.