The impact of user innovation on social welfare isanalyzed by comparing user innovators to manufacturer innovators in terms oftheir innovation incentives and knowledge.Following a review of theliterature on product development by users, it is argued that the introductionof user innovation in a...

The literature on new goods and social welfare generally assumes that innovations are developed by manufacturers. But innovation by users has been found to also be an important part of innovative activity in the economy. In this paper we explore the impact of users as a source of innovation on...

In this paper we explain how firms seeking to take advantage of distributed innovation and outsourcing can bridge the tension between value creation and value capture by modifying the modular structure of their technical systems. Specifically, we introduce the concept of “IP modularity”, a...

Modularity is a means of partitioning technical knowledge about a product or process. When state-sanctioned intellectual property rights are ineffective or costly to enforce, modularity can be used to hide information and thus protect intellectual property (IP). We investigate the impact of...