April 18, 2025 • 23 mins
Welcome to part five of our enlightening series on open innovation and free user innovation, featuring Eric von Hippel. In this episode, we delve deep into the concept of user-driven innovation and explore real-world examples from sports and daily life. Eric recounts the origins of mountain biking and innovative techniques in rugby, emphasizing how users are not just passive consumers but active innovators. We also discuss insights on lead user studies and how radical user behaviors are driving change in various fields. Tune in to uncover how you can harness the power of user innovation in your own ventures.
00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Acknowledgment
00:53 Recap of Previous Sessions
01:15 The Importance of User Innovation
03:46 Mountain Biking: A Case Study in User Innovation
06:29 Behavioral Innovations in Sports
10:23 User Innovation in Parenting
13:32 Rugby Innovations: Aiden's Experience
16:56 Final Thoughts on User Innovation
20:47 Lead User Studies and Conclusion
Find Eric: https://evhippel.mit.edu
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to part five of thiswonderful series on open innovation and
free user innovation, before we come toeric i want to thank our sponsors of this
series the kings of free innovation andconnecting with the power of the crowd.
Wazoku.
They are pioneers of what they call totalinnovation, transforming how organizations
(00:20):
solve challenges, drive growth, anddeliver measurable results as the world's
only networked innovation marketplace.
Wazoku connects people, ideas,and technology to create
scalable, impactful innovation.
You can discover moreabout Wazoku at wazoku.
com.
. Eric von Hippel.
You're very welcome back.
(00:41):
Thank you very much, Aiden.
This has been real fun
It's been so good, man.
We, I've learned so much from you.
And from the people you've broughtinto my world, which is great.
We've, so far.
I thought we'd just do a very quickrecap of what we've done, , the deep work
into free user innovation, your work.
Then you brought us deep dive into
(01:01):
medicine, medical devices, et cetera.
Pedro was on the show then, andwe've just had Andrew talk about the
legals of all this, but maybe in yourwords, you'd give us a quick recap
of why we did it and what we did.
Sure.
So the whole idea of this is tomake your listeners aware of the
importance of user innovationand the fact that they do it too.
(01:26):
It's not just that one ispassive and waiting around
for producers to do something.
'cause often they won't, and if theydo something, it isn't specific to you.
So in the beginning I talked about that inmy two initial sessions saying, Hey, look,
a lot of times it doesn't pay producers toinnovate and make precisely what you want.
(01:49):
They don't understand what it is.
You're a market of one.
So this is true.
In every area that users care about.
It's true.
We talked about, the heart lungmachine is true for the tools, in
other words, that a surgeon uses,and it's also true for everything
(02:09):
consumers do, like sports and so on.
Basketball wasn't invented bya company making basketballs.
Right.
And mountain biking wasn't inventedby a company making mountain bikes.
'cause in fact, no bike companies were.
So what I wanna talk about today,then we went in depth up to now
(02:30):
saying first of all it exists.
And secondly, because everybodycares about medicine and health,
it's like, hey, it applies there too.
Right?
And that's what Pedro talked about andthat's what Andrew talked about, that you
have the legal right to do this stuff.
And by the way, you can just thinkto yourself how important this must
(02:53):
be, because if you, for instance,have a chronic disease, you go and
see your doctor for 15 minutes,four times a year for rheumatoid
arthritis or diabetes or whatever.
Who's running your lifethe rest of the time?
Who's figuring out what to do?
(03:15):
It's you.
It isn't the doctor.
So, today what I wanna talkabout is summarizing that and
saying, listen, there are hugeopportunities for you out of this.
You are doing it already.
You just have to be aware of it, andthen you won't feel so passive in
(03:37):
the face of, well, the manufacturerdoesn't make exactly what I want.
Right.
You do it.
We have faith in you doing it.
As an example, let's talkabout mountain biking.
Okay?
Now this is a standard storyabout how things start.
It's a sport.
Manufacturers were making road bikes.
(03:58):
And when you were a kid, you probablyused a road bike, thin tires.
You were very proud of it, zipping along.
And what then happened was somebikers said, well, I think we wanna
go down mountains instead of on roads.
And so they took their roadbikes and they tried to ride 'em
down a mountain, specificallyMount Tamal Pius in California.
(04:21):
And of course the bikes fell apart.
This was unfortunate 'cause they gotthe bikes from their parents as a
gift for Christmas, but no worries,because it was a five year warranty.
So they go into their, sports dealerwith the warranty and the crushed
bike and say, so gimme a new one.
(04:42):
And the store says, well,what did you do with it?
Well, I wrote down a mountain.
You shouldn't have done that.
Your warranty is void, right?
You shouldn't have done that.
Not what you do with a bike.
So that's so cool, right?
Because they then said, just like in thecase of the heart lung machine or anything
(05:03):
else, we've talked about, well, if you arenot gonna do it, I'm gonna build a bike.
And so they built bikes for themselves.
Initially called clunkers.
They put 'em together.
They had heavier tires.
They
were stronger in the frame.
They used motorcycle brakes becausethe regular bike brakes weren't strong
(05:23):
enough to help you down a mountain.
Now, that then was somethingthat a few users did.
Just like in the case, I toldin an earlier episode about the
heart lung machine companiesmaking a million road bikes.
Weren't really attracted to theidea of a hundred crazy people
(05:45):
riding down Mount Tamal Pius, right?
If we ignore 'em, maybe they'llgo away, but they didn't go away.
And eventually the sports spread.
And today more than half of themany millions of mountain bikes
or bikes sold are mountain bikes.
So once again, the users did it,but they didn't just say, Hey, look.
(06:09):
Manufacturer of bikesmake me a mountain bike.
Because the answer was no.
They had to do it.
They had to demonstrate thatthere was a market, and then
you got yourself a new sport.
Now you know all that story.
What I did not talk about,we focused on products.
(06:29):
What I did not talk aboutwas the idea that it's also
behaviors, so a mountain bike.
Is no good unless you know howto ride down mountains, right?
And so what the users were doingis not only pushing the hardware,
they were pushing the behaviors.
(06:50):
So first they'd write downand that was really great.
But then after a while, they ofcourse wanted more challenge.
And so what they began to do was jump.
Jump over rocks, jump down littlecliffs, all that sort of thing.
Now when they jumped over rocksand down little cliffs, one of the
things they discovered, 'cause thesemountain bikes did not have any
(07:12):
suspension, what they discovered is,man, this hurts when I come down.
Oh, damn right.
So manufacturers are sayingbasically, well, you shouldn't jump.
Right.
I mean, we sell you a mountainbike, you shouldn't jump.
(07:33):
So anyway, but of course they did jumpand one guy who did jump was a orthopedic
surgeon who realized, you know what,this is really bad for your back.
And so what he did was he modifiedthe post, the seat post of his bike,
put a spring in it, made it easier.
(07:55):
Now other people adopted thatsame old story and we don't
have to go through that again.
It's the same oldstory as any innovation.
The user does it.
But the point here, I wanna raise thisdifferent, is what the user did was
innovated in behaviors, in techniques.
(08:17):
The thing, the reason you neededsuspension was 'cause the user was
doing something new in technique.
Now that's kind of amazing becausewhat it means is the value of a
mountain bike depends not only inthe hardware, it depends on what
you can do with it, and that reallyis what the users are inventing.
(08:45):
A mountain bike is no damn good unlessyou have all these tricks up your
sleeve and so on and so forth, andheck, and have fun going down mountains.
So.
Now we get to a funny place becausebefore I said to you, you know what?
Users come up with the first mountainbike and you say, yeah, okay.
You gotta do that for yourself.
(09:05):
Yeah.
Okay.
And then the manufacturers come in.
Yeah.
Okay.
But they don't come inand sell you techniques.
How do you diffuse techniques?
Users do it peer to peer.
So you're going down the mountain.
You go off a cliff, you fall downto the other side, the next guy down
(09:26):
says, you know, bro, you did it wrong.
Let me show you how to do that.
And so without any marketplace, anyproducer involvement, except in the
case of professional coaches, at thevery, very, very high end, what you
have is users both innovate and diffuse.
(09:47):
Right.
So the idea of what is going on inthe marketplace is really only a
very small part of what basicallyis a user innovation system with
manufacturers making pieces.
So when you think to yourself aboutwhat you are doing, not only are you
(10:12):
responsible for inventing or findingthe new tools to make the new sport or
the new hardware for whatever, you'realso responsible for the behaviors.
Now, if you think about it further,like my daughter Christiana did a
study the apple doesn't fall farfrom the tree, something like that.
(10:35):
So I told my daughter,listen, do anything you want.
If it happens to be userinnovation, that's really good.
So she was studying parents who were doingtaking care of a first kid and they have a
special site on Reddit with many thousandsof people called Beyond the Bump.
(10:55):
I'm sure there are other sites too.
And the question was.
How do you bring up a baby?
I don't know.
What, how do you put a baby to sleep?
So the point was there young parents wereexplaining to each other how they did it.
(11:16):
In other words, they were sharing.
Techniques, how do I get my baby to sleep?
All these very strange things that Idon't know if you have 'em in Europe,
but you have 'em in the States.
Well, what you do is you can put yourbaby's little bassinet thing on top
of the clothes dryer and turn it on.
(11:36):
Do you know about that one?
Aiden?
You do.
We put whiskey on thesoother over here on the,
Okay, well, I'll tell you
just so we're clear.
We don't.
We don't, so I have no liability issues.
We don't do that.
No, we don't do that.
But, but certainly that was notinvented by Jim Beam, right here.
(11:59):
Give whiskey to your baby, nor wasputting the baby's bassinet thing on
top of the dryer invented by GeneralElectric or the maker of an appliance.
Right?
These are user behaviorsapplying standard equipment.
But in a new way, right?
(12:22):
So when you think about that, think about,yes, you have to take care of your baby.
There's advice going there, but you'realso trying to run the rest of your life.
And that all involves innovations.
It all involves instant adjustments.
It's like, oh my gosh, we can't bringlittle Billy over to Freddy's house today.
(12:45):
Freddy's got the flu.
What I do now, I'm supposedto give a lecture, you know?
I mean, oh, I know what I'll do.
I'll bring in the babyand entertain my students.
Anyway, you've all gone through thiskind of a thing, so once again, you
are responsible for your system of use.
(13:05):
Other people can give you advice, but now.
It will help you to conceiveof it as a system of use.
So you have a specific system ofuse around, let's say mountain
biking as we talked about it.
It's got products in it and it's gotbehaviors in it like jumping, and
(13:27):
it intersects with everything elsein your life that also has systems.
So Aiden, I know you play rugby.
And maybe you can illustrate this.
We off, we have to draw youin with your own experience.
Tell us about it.
Well, there's a, there was acouple actually that came to mind.
One was, um, one of the things Ithink, and I somebody observed this,
(13:50):
was that in, in rugby we have thisthing called a line out where you.
Lift a player and that theycompete in the air for the ball.
And over years, you, you originally,you weren't allowed to lift
players, but then they evolvedand you were able to lift people.
So lifting technique became important.
And one of the ways we lifted peoplewas just on the bottom of the quad,
there's a, like a little shelf.
(14:11):
So the bigger the quads,the more the shelf.
But.
What players started to do was theystarted to tape up their legs and then
fold over a piece of padding behindthat, so it would create this shelf.
And the shelf was, it waseasier to lift a player then, so
you'd get more hide out of him.
But then somebody along the way went.
That's a real pain for players all thetime because you need to put the tape on.
(14:35):
Your legs are sticky, rips all thehair off your legs, have to spray
this special spray to remove thestickiness, and somebody created
these pads that you just pull up andthey have little shelves on them.
And that, that was a behaviordriven innovation that came to mind.
Exactly.
Based on, on what you weresaying about the bikes.
That's fantastic.
(14:56):
Yeah.
Now there was anotherone you came up with.
Tell us about that one
Yeah, well the otherone was behavior driven.
So one of the, I had at one stagein my early career, I was trying
to break into the team and.
One of my coaches said, you know, youneed to be good at a thing that people
go, oh, Aiden's good at that thing.
(15:16):
He said, you don't be a jack of alltrades, be a master of one and be
able to do the the other things.
And what he, I got, I broke myarm and I said to the fitness guy.
Hey man, this is really specific.
What I wanna do is be able to runreally, really hard for like 10, 20
meters and then break a tackle and geta pass to somebody else to create space
(15:38):
and be known for that guy, be that guy.
So, because I was injured, I hadloads of time to work on this, I.
And we worked on specific type oftraining, like where I do like three
really heavy squats and then go out andrun 20 meter sprint, come back, do more
squats, do, did a sprint, and I cameand I, I started to do it and ended
up playing for, to loses specificallybecause I could do that thing.
(16:02):
And again, it was behavior driven, butI, I then worked on it in order to build,
build that skill, build that behavior.
That's wonderful.
And notice in that caseit was pure behavior.
You didn't change the rugby ball, youdidn't change the goal, you didn't
write, change the lines on the field.
It was really behavior.
And in this particular case, youcould do it without your teammates
(16:27):
having to coordinate with you, right?
You could just do it and beknown as doing that thing.
That's interesting because someother techniques probably involve
coordination among the players, right?
game plays or moves.
So when we have starter moves, et cetera,everybody has to be on the same page.
(16:47):
But to your point, and you'reeducating me here, by the way,
putting into my own context is.
You can do this outside the system.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is fantastic.
So, so this is really what I wanted toconvey over these talks, and thank you so
much for giving me the opportunity, Aiden.
I mean, it's really fun, but the ideais that everybody stands around saying.
(17:12):
I know where innovation comes from.
It's the manufacturer, and then you neverthink to yourself that, oh, if you want
a special recipe, it's not like you writeto the Campbell Soup Company saying,
please invent me a special can of soup.
Right?
You go to the stove and getingredients and you do it.
(17:35):
So there's a huge amount of personalinvention, whether you're a surgeon
or a rugby player, or just anyof us living our daily lives.
When you're aware of that,you can say, you know what?
I wanna be good at that.
I wanna understand it as something I do.
And that is what the sort ofthe field that I'm in about
(17:59):
user innovation is all about.
It's breaking this mindset that we haveto wait around till a producer does it
and saying, no, you are free to do it.
Here's how.
Here's some tools that you can use.
Here's some patterns.
It's amazing.
Go, go, go.
I wanted to ask you onething on that though.
(18:20):
'cause , the first time I learned aboutyour work was actually was Christensen
wrote , and referenced you and, . I, oneof the things that came across to me was
what he called and I don't know if itwas his term, but customer captivity.
So you, you, build a product, youget really good at it and you fall
into the rut of being really good atthat and you stop seeing the edges.
(18:44):
And Gary Hamill, who was a recentguest on the show, he said, you mistake
the edge of the rush for the horizon.
I loved how he said that.
So you're like kind of going, yeah, we'redoing this, we're doing really well.
You don't really see what's happening inthe behaviors anymore, and because you're
so involved in execution of your rushthat you miss opportunities like this.
(19:05):
And I wondered, had you some partingadvice for our audience, for people
who work in innovation to go how todo this, how to observe behaviors.
What's your best in class, in your view?
Yeah, so it's funny because Clay andI, um, we, we, he he eventually said,
I really regretted writing that.
But what Clay said in his initial bookwas don't pay attention to your customers.
(19:32):
You know, they'll mislead you.
They'll never go for the bleeding edge.
And the example that I gave backto him was, yeah, it's because
you, the manufacturer won't change.
So in other words, when companies werebeginning, you know, in the old days
(19:52):
you, the way you transmitted data fromplace to place was you put it on a tape
and then you put a bunch of tapes on atruck and you send it somewhere else.
Well, okay.
Then your customer for data transferwas talking to a trucking firm.
Do you imagine those users who wereswitching over to the internet are gonna
(20:17):
call the trucking firm and say, Hey, youknow, you wanna get into the internet?
No, they're just gonna suddenlyleave one day, and so you
have to focus on the users.
And you can focus on the leading edgeusers, but it's not by any means just
(20:37):
those people you've pulled into yourorbit as your standard customers.
No, you gotta look broadly.
I mean it's so cool.
We do these lead user studiesand there's one wonderful
one I can tell you about now.
It's so cool.
Do we have time?
.Would love to.
Would love to.
So we're studying now, people who usehome heating systems and so on, right?
(21:01):
And there's big energy conservationand all the rest of it going on, right?
And this is with two wonderful people
Karin, Warner and SAMHSA Helo.
And what we're saying is,okay, lead users are the ones.
Not your customers whoreally break out of the box.
(21:25):
And so in this case, the Dutch heatingsystem company or whatever it is, says,
yeah, we've got this distribution ofpeople and the amount of energy they use
and we try to get 'em energy efficientfurnaces and all the rest of that stuff.
But then there are peoplewho use 3% or less.
(21:45):
Of the standard amount.
It's not just they cut it by 20%,they cut it to practically zero.
What are they doing?
They're doing somethingentirely different.
What they're doing is heating theirbodies instead of the environment.
They shut off the furnaces.
(22:07):
They're saying, well, wait a minute.
Now when I'm outside, I'mnot trying to heat nature.
So they went on an entirely differentpath, and a furnace company would
not be able to cope with that.
They don't make clothing, so there'sa giant break in the data that
nobody is paying attention to.
(22:27):
It's at the leading edge.
And so that's lead user studies.
I guess we didn't get into that.
You guys all have to read this stuff.
Absolutely, and I'm gonna try and getEric in to do another episode on that.
You gave me a breadcrumbfor the future man.
One of the future.
Yeah.
So let's see whether peoplelike what we did so far.
Oh, , the feedback's beenabsolutely wonderful.
(22:49):
Eric, for people who wanna find you,find those free books that you give away.
You really eat your own cooking.
Where's the best place to find you?
if you go to my MIT website, , justenter my name , into the search bar,
and one of the things that'll show upis my MIT website and on my MIT website,
there are free books, free articles, freevideos, all sorts of things that I hope
(23:12):
will help you and that you might enjoy.
It's been a wonderfulpleasure doing this with you.
I've learned so, so much and I'monly at the start of the rabbit hole.
I look forward to going.
Further, further down, down.
It's been an absolute pleasure, authorof Free Innovation, Eric von Hippel.
Thank you for joining us.
Welcome back to part five of thiswonderful series on open innovation and
free user innovation, before we come toeric i want to thank our sponsors of this
series the kings of free innovation andconnecting with the power of the crowd.
Wazoku.
They are pioneers of what they call totalinnovation, transforming how organizations
(00:20):
solve challenges, drive growth, anddeliver measurable results as the world's
only networked innovation marketplace.
Wazoku connects people, ideas,and technology to create
scalable, impactful innovation.
You can discover moreabout Wazoku at wazoku.
com.
. Eric von Hippel.
You're very welcome back.
(00:41):
Thank you very much, Aiden.
This has been real fun
It's been so good, man.
We, I've learned so much from you.
And from the people you've broughtinto my world, which is great.
We've, so far.
I thought we'd just do a very quickrecap of what we've done, , the deep work
into free user innovation, your work.
Then you brought us deep dive into
(01:01):
medicine, medical devices, et cetera.
Pedro was on the show then, andwe've just had Andrew talk about the
legals of all this, but maybe in yourwords, you'd give us a quick recap
of why we did it and what we did.
Sure.
So the whole idea of this is tomake your listeners aware of the
importance of user innovationand the fact that they do it too.
(01:26):
It's not just that one ispassive and waiting around
for producers to do something.
'cause often they won't, and if theydo something, it isn't specific to you.
So in the beginning I talked about that inmy two initial sessions saying, Hey, look,
a lot of times it doesn't pay producers toinnovate and make precisely what you want.
(01:49):
They don't understand what it is.
You're a market of one.
So this is true.
In every area that users care about.
It's true.
We talked about, the heart lungmachine is true for the tools, in
other words, that a surgeon uses,and it's also true for everything
(02:09):
consumers do, like sports and so on.
Basketball wasn't invented bya company making basketballs.
Right.
And mountain biking wasn't inventedby a company making mountain bikes.
'cause in fact, no bike companies were.
So what I wanna talk about today,then we went in depth up to now
(02:30):
saying first of all it exists.
And secondly, because everybodycares about medicine and health,
it's like, hey, it applies there too.
Right?
And that's what Pedro talked about andthat's what Andrew talked about, that you
have the legal right to do this stuff.
And by the way, you can just thinkto yourself how important this must
(02:53):
be, because if you, for instance,have a chronic disease, you go and
see your doctor for 15 minutes,four times a year for rheumatoid
arthritis or diabetes or whatever.
Who's running your lifethe rest of the time?
Who's figuring out what to do?
(03:15):
It's you.
It isn't the doctor.
So, today what I wanna talkabout is summarizing that and
saying, listen, there are hugeopportunities for you out of this.
You are doing it already.
You just have to be aware of it, andthen you won't feel so passive in
(03:37):
the face of, well, the manufacturerdoesn't make exactly what I want.
Right.
You do it.
We have faith in you doing it.
As an example, let's talkabout mountain biking.
Okay?
Now this is a standard storyabout how things start.
It's a sport.
Manufacturers were making road bikes.
(03:58):
And when you were a kid, you probablyused a road bike, thin tires.
You were very proud of it, zipping along.
And what then happened was somebikers said, well, I think we wanna
go down mountains instead of on roads.
And so they took their roadbikes and they tried to ride 'em
down a mountain, specificallyMount Tamal Pius in California.
(04:21):
And of course the bikes fell apart.
This was unfortunate 'cause they gotthe bikes from their parents as a
gift for Christmas, but no worries,because it was a five year warranty.
So they go into their, sports dealerwith the warranty and the crushed
bike and say, so gimme a new one.
(04:42):
And the store says, well,what did you do with it?
Well, I wrote down a mountain.
You shouldn't have done that.
Your warranty is void, right?
You shouldn't have done that.
Not what you do with a bike.
So that's so cool, right?
Because they then said, just like in thecase of the heart lung machine or anything
(05:03):
else, we've talked about, well, if you arenot gonna do it, I'm gonna build a bike.
And so they built bikes for themselves.
Initially called clunkers.
They put 'em together.
They had heavier tires.
They
were stronger in the frame.
They used motorcycle brakes becausethe regular bike brakes weren't strong
(05:23):
enough to help you down a mountain.
Now, that then was somethingthat a few users did.
Just like in the case, I toldin an earlier episode about the
heart lung machine companiesmaking a million road bikes.
Weren't really attracted to theidea of a hundred crazy people
(05:45):
riding down Mount Tamal Pius, right?
If we ignore 'em, maybe they'llgo away, but they didn't go away.
And eventually the sports spread.
And today more than half of themany millions of mountain bikes
or bikes sold are mountain bikes.
So once again, the users did it,but they didn't just say, Hey, look.
(06:09):
Manufacturer of bikesmake me a mountain bike.
Because the answer was no.
They had to do it.
They had to demonstrate thatthere was a market, and then
you got yourself a new sport.
Now you know all that story.
What I did not talk about,we focused on products.
(06:29):
What I did not talk aboutwas the idea that it's also
behaviors, so a mountain bike.
Is no good unless you know howto ride down mountains, right?
And so what the users were doingis not only pushing the hardware,
they were pushing the behaviors.
(06:50):
So first they'd write downand that was really great.
But then after a while, they ofcourse wanted more challenge.
And so what they began to do was jump.
Jump over rocks, jump down littlecliffs, all that sort of thing.
Now when they jumped over rocksand down little cliffs, one of the
things they discovered, 'cause thesemountain bikes did not have any
(07:12):
suspension, what they discovered is,man, this hurts when I come down.
Oh, damn right.
So manufacturers are sayingbasically, well, you shouldn't jump.
Right.
I mean, we sell you a mountainbike, you shouldn't jump.
(07:33):
So anyway, but of course they did jumpand one guy who did jump was a orthopedic
surgeon who realized, you know what,this is really bad for your back.
And so what he did was he modifiedthe post, the seat post of his bike,
put a spring in it, made it easier.
(07:55):
Now other people adopted thatsame old story and we don't
have to go through that again.
It's the same oldstory as any innovation.
The user does it.
But the point here, I wanna raise thisdifferent, is what the user did was
innovated in behaviors, in techniques.
(08:17):
The thing, the reason you neededsuspension was 'cause the user was
doing something new in technique.
Now that's kind of amazing becausewhat it means is the value of a
mountain bike depends not only inthe hardware, it depends on what
you can do with it, and that reallyis what the users are inventing.
(08:45):
A mountain bike is no damn good unlessyou have all these tricks up your
sleeve and so on and so forth, andheck, and have fun going down mountains.
So.
Now we get to a funny place becausebefore I said to you, you know what?
Users come up with the first mountainbike and you say, yeah, okay.
You gotta do that for yourself.
(09:05):
Yeah.
Okay.
And then the manufacturers come in.
Yeah.
Okay.
But they don't come inand sell you techniques.
How do you diffuse techniques?
Users do it peer to peer.
So you're going down the mountain.
You go off a cliff, you fall downto the other side, the next guy down
(09:26):
says, you know, bro, you did it wrong.
Let me show you how to do that.
And so without any marketplace, anyproducer involvement, except in the
case of professional coaches, at thevery, very, very high end, what you
have is users both innovate and diffuse.
(09:47):
Right.
So the idea of what is going on inthe marketplace is really only a
very small part of what basicallyis a user innovation system with
manufacturers making pieces.
So when you think to yourself aboutwhat you are doing, not only are you
(10:12):
responsible for inventing or findingthe new tools to make the new sport or
the new hardware for whatever, you'realso responsible for the behaviors.
Now, if you think about it further,like my daughter Christiana did a
study the apple doesn't fall farfrom the tree, something like that.
(10:35):
So I told my daughter,listen, do anything you want.
If it happens to be userinnovation, that's really good.
So she was studying parents who were doingtaking care of a first kid and they have a
special site on Reddit with many thousandsof people called Beyond the Bump.
(10:55):
I'm sure there are other sites too.
And the question was.
How do you bring up a baby?
I don't know.
What, how do you put a baby to sleep?
So the point was there young parents wereexplaining to each other how they did it.
(11:16):
In other words, they were sharing.
Techniques, how do I get my baby to sleep?
All these very strange things that Idon't know if you have 'em in Europe,
but you have 'em in the States.
Well, what you do is you can put yourbaby's little bassinet thing on top
of the clothes dryer and turn it on.
(11:36):
Do you know about that one?
Aiden?
You do.
We put whiskey on thesoother over here on the,
Okay, well, I'll tell you
just so we're clear.
We don't.
We don't, so I have no liability issues.
We don't do that.
No, we don't do that.
But, but certainly that was notinvented by Jim Beam, right here.
(11:59):
Give whiskey to your baby, nor wasputting the baby's bassinet thing on
top of the dryer invented by GeneralElectric or the maker of an appliance.
Right?
These are user behaviorsapplying standard equipment.
But in a new way, right?
(12:22):
So when you think about that, think about,yes, you have to take care of your baby.
There's advice going there, but you'realso trying to run the rest of your life.
And that all involves innovations.
It all involves instant adjustments.
It's like, oh my gosh, we can't bringlittle Billy over to Freddy's house today.
(12:45):
Freddy's got the flu.
What I do now, I'm supposedto give a lecture, you know?
I mean, oh, I know what I'll do.
I'll bring in the babyand entertain my students.
Anyway, you've all gone through thiskind of a thing, so once again, you
are responsible for your system of use.
(13:05):
Other people can give you advice, but now.
It will help you to conceiveof it as a system of use.
So you have a specific system ofuse around, let's say mountain
biking as we talked about it.
It's got products in it and it's gotbehaviors in it like jumping, and
(13:27):
it intersects with everything elsein your life that also has systems.
So Aiden, I know you play rugby.
And maybe you can illustrate this.
We off, we have to draw youin with your own experience.
Tell us about it.
Well, there's a, there was acouple actually that came to mind.
One was, um, one of the things Ithink, and I somebody observed this,
(13:50):
was that in, in rugby we have thisthing called a line out where you.
Lift a player and that theycompete in the air for the ball.
And over years, you, you originally,you weren't allowed to lift
players, but then they evolvedand you were able to lift people.
So lifting technique became important.
And one of the ways we lifted peoplewas just on the bottom of the quad,
there's a, like a little shelf.
(14:11):
So the bigger the quads,the more the shelf.
But.
What players started to do was theystarted to tape up their legs and then
fold over a piece of padding behindthat, so it would create this shelf.
And the shelf was, it waseasier to lift a player then, so
you'd get more hide out of him.
But then somebody along the way went.
That's a real pain for players all thetime because you need to put the tape on.
(14:35):
Your legs are sticky, rips all thehair off your legs, have to spray
this special spray to remove thestickiness, and somebody created
these pads that you just pull up andthey have little shelves on them.
And that, that was a behaviordriven innovation that came to mind.
Exactly.
Based on, on what you weresaying about the bikes.
That's fantastic.
(14:56):
Yeah.
Now there was anotherone you came up with.
Tell us about that one
Yeah, well the otherone was behavior driven.
So one of the, I had at one stagein my early career, I was trying
to break into the team and.
One of my coaches said, you know, youneed to be good at a thing that people
go, oh, Aiden's good at that thing.
(15:16):
He said, you don't be a jack of alltrades, be a master of one and be
able to do the the other things.
And what he, I got, I broke myarm and I said to the fitness guy.
Hey man, this is really specific.
What I wanna do is be able to runreally, really hard for like 10, 20
meters and then break a tackle and geta pass to somebody else to create space
(15:38):
and be known for that guy, be that guy.
So, because I was injured, I hadloads of time to work on this, I.
And we worked on specific type oftraining, like where I do like three
really heavy squats and then go out andrun 20 meter sprint, come back, do more
squats, do, did a sprint, and I cameand I, I started to do it and ended
up playing for, to loses specificallybecause I could do that thing.
(16:02):
And again, it was behavior driven, butI, I then worked on it in order to build,
build that skill, build that behavior.
That's wonderful.
And notice in that caseit was pure behavior.
You didn't change the rugby ball, youdidn't change the goal, you didn't
write, change the lines on the field.
It was really behavior.
And in this particular case, youcould do it without your teammates
(16:27):
having to coordinate with you, right?
You could just do it and beknown as doing that thing.
That's interesting because someother techniques probably involve
coordination among the players, right?
game plays or moves.
So when we have starter moves, et cetera,everybody has to be on the same page.
(16:47):
But to your point, and you'reeducating me here, by the way,
putting into my own context is.
You can do this outside the system.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is fantastic.
So, so this is really what I wanted toconvey over these talks, and thank you so
much for giving me the opportunity, Aiden.
I mean, it's really fun, but the ideais that everybody stands around saying.
(17:12):
I know where innovation comes from.
It's the manufacturer, and then you neverthink to yourself that, oh, if you want
a special recipe, it's not like you writeto the Campbell Soup Company saying,
please invent me a special can of soup.
Right?
You go to the stove and getingredients and you do it.
(17:35):
So there's a huge amount of personalinvention, whether you're a surgeon
or a rugby player, or just anyof us living our daily lives.
When you're aware of that,you can say, you know what?
I wanna be good at that.
I wanna understand it as something I do.
And that is what the sort ofthe field that I'm in about
(17:59):
user innovation is all about.
It's breaking this mindset that we haveto wait around till a producer does it
and saying, no, you are free to do it.
Here's how.
Here's some tools that you can use.
Here's some patterns.
It's amazing.
Go, go, go.
I wanted to ask you onething on that though.
(18:20):
'cause , the first time I learned aboutyour work was actually was Christensen
wrote , and referenced you and, . I, oneof the things that came across to me was
what he called and I don't know if itwas his term, but customer captivity.
So you, you, build a product, youget really good at it and you fall
into the rut of being really good atthat and you stop seeing the edges.
(18:44):
And Gary Hamill, who was a recentguest on the show, he said, you mistake
the edge of the rush for the horizon.
I loved how he said that.
So you're like kind of going, yeah, we'redoing this, we're doing really well.
You don't really see what's happening inthe behaviors anymore, and because you're
so involved in execution of your rushthat you miss opportunities like this.
(19:05):
And I wondered, had you some partingadvice for our audience, for people
who work in innovation to go how todo this, how to observe behaviors.
What's your best in class, in your view?
Yeah, so it's funny because Clay andI, um, we, we, he he eventually said,
I really regretted writing that.
But what Clay said in his initial bookwas don't pay attention to your customers.
(19:32):
You know, they'll mislead you.
They'll never go for the bleeding edge.
And the example that I gave backto him was, yeah, it's because
you, the manufacturer won't change.
So in other words, when companies werebeginning, you know, in the old days
(19:52):
you, the way you transmitted data fromplace to place was you put it on a tape
and then you put a bunch of tapes on atruck and you send it somewhere else.
Well, okay.
Then your customer for data transferwas talking to a trucking firm.
Do you imagine those users who wereswitching over to the internet are gonna
(20:17):
call the trucking firm and say, Hey, youknow, you wanna get into the internet?
No, they're just gonna suddenlyleave one day, and so you
have to focus on the users.
And you can focus on the leading edgeusers, but it's not by any means just
(20:37):
those people you've pulled into yourorbit as your standard customers.
No, you gotta look broadly.
I mean it's so cool.
We do these lead user studiesand there's one wonderful
one I can tell you about now.
It's so cool.
Do we have time?
.Would love to.
Would love to.
So we're studying now, people who usehome heating systems and so on, right?
(21:01):
And there's big energy conservationand all the rest of it going on, right?
And this is with two wonderful people
Karin, Warner and SAMHSA Helo.
And what we're saying is,okay, lead users are the ones.
Not your customers whoreally break out of the box.
(21:25):
And so in this case, the Dutch heatingsystem company or whatever it is, says,
yeah, we've got this distribution ofpeople and the amount of energy they use
and we try to get 'em energy efficientfurnaces and all the rest of that stuff.
But then there are peoplewho use 3% or less.
(21:45):
Of the standard amount.
It's not just they cut it by 20%,they cut it to practically zero.
What are they doing?
They're doing somethingentirely different.
What they're doing is heating theirbodies instead of the environment.
They shut off the furnaces.
(22:07):
They're saying, well, wait a minute.
Now when I'm outside, I'mnot trying to heat nature.
So they went on an entirely differentpath, and a furnace company would
not be able to cope with that.
They don't make clothing, so there'sa giant break in the data that
nobody is paying attention to.
(22:27):
It's at the leading edge.
And so that's lead user studies.
I guess we didn't get into that.
You guys all have to read this stuff.
Absolutely, and I'm gonna try and getEric in to do another episode on that.
You gave me a breadcrumbfor the future man.
One of the future.
Yeah.
So let's see whether peoplelike what we did so far.
Oh, , the feedback's beenabsolutely wonderful.
(22:49):
Eric, for people who wanna find you,find those free books that you give away.
You really eat your own cooking.
Where's the best place to find you?
if you go to my MIT website, , justenter my name , into the search bar,
and one of the things that'll show upis my MIT website and on my MIT website,
there are free books, free articles, freevideos, all sorts of things that I hope
(23:12):
will help you and that you might enjoy.
It's been a wonderfulpleasure doing this with you.
I've learned so, so much and I'monly at the start of the rabbit hole.
I look forward to going.
Further, further down, down.
It's been an absolute pleasure, authorof Free Innovation, Eric von Hippel.
Thank you for joining us.
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