This study investigates the origins of disruptive innovation. According to the canonical model, disruptive innovations do not originate from existing customers - in contrast with what the user innovation literature would predict. We compiled a unique historical and content-analytic dataset based...

This paper is the first to study the organizational behavior of “embedded lead users” (ELUs) – employees who are lead users of their employing firm's products or services. Most of the literature views producers and users as organizationally distinct. Employing lead users is a novel mode...

To increase and speed up diffusion of new product introductions firms may rely on network marketing. They select individuals in customer and user networks whose own product adoptions and opinions influence adoption decisions of others in the network. In this paper we transfer this rationale to...