The Sources of Innovation

It has long been assumed that product innovations are typically developed by product manufacturers. Because this assumption deals with the basic matter of who the innovator is, it has inevitably had a major impact on innovation-related research, on firms' management of research and development, and on government innovation policy. However, it now appears that this basic assumption is often wrong. In this book I begin by presenting a series of studies showing that the sources of innovation vary greatly. In some fields, innovation users develop most innovations. In others, suppliers of innovation-related components and materials are the typical sources of innovation. In still other fields, conventional wisdom…