Читать книгу Innovation in Sport. Innovation Trajectories and Process Optimization онлайн

25 страница из 54

Moreover, it is possible to consider users as actors in innovation, given their capacity to move, adapt, extend, divert and transform novelties and their prescribed uses (Akrich 1998). This is by no means to postulate an absolute symmetry between designer and consumer (Flichy 2003), but simply to note that there is no watertight barrier between design, production and use – which are all sources of creativity.

The consumer may seem to be nothing more than a tactician, capable of playing with innovations designed by market professionals. By developing the lead-user theory (LUT), Von Hippel (2005) pushes the consideration of the user to the point of affording him or her a “lead role” in the innovation process. More so than the early adopter, according to Rogers, who approves or diverts manufacturers’ innovations, the lead user is a developer of specific products or services that the market does not yet know how to use or does not yet want to use. Von Hippel was interested in lead users (or “pioneer users”) in the creation of “informational goods” (such as software), but also in the manufacture of “material goods”, with a particular focus on the sports sector, which is teeming with creativity carried by these user-innovators.