User innovation refers to innovation by consumers and end users, rather than suppliers. Eric von Hippel (von Hippel 1986) of MIT and others observed that many products and services are actually developed or at least refined, by users, at the site of implementation and use. These ideas are then moved back into the supply network. This is because products are developed to meet the widest possible need; when individual users face problems that the majority of consumers do not, they have no choice but to develop their own modifications to existing products, or entirely new products, to solve their issues.
User innovation has a number of degrees: innovation of use, innovation in services, innovation in configuration of technologies, and finally the innovation of novel technologies themselves.
