Conventionally, innovation is viewed as a closed and linear process, where a firm’s research and development (R&D) efforts are focused on developing and pushing new products and services to meet perceived market needs. Customers are normally involved in testing new products, or to provide feedback for improvements on existing products. Customers usually play, at most, a peripheral role in the actual research and development stages of the innovation process. This is especially so in more traditional industries, such as agriculture, manufacturing, and construction. However, anecdotal and empirical evidence shows that more distributed and collaborative innovation processes now punctuate this model of innovation, with an increasing number of firms actively seeking diverse sources of knowledge in all stages of their innovation activities. In the mid-1970s,Professor Eric von Hippel of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) observed an interesting anomaly in the scientific instrument sector and found instances where users of scientific instruments frequently invented, prototyped, and tested the instruments before passing them on to the manufacturer for refinement and production. The findings sparked a stream of research into what is now termed 'user innovation'. Today, firms from diverse industries, including textiles, industrial products, and automotive, are utilising various tools and methods to engage users in all stages of the innovation process
