Section 21.2. Community-Based Innovation and Development: An Even Broader Phenomenon

21.2. Community-Based Innovation and Development: An Even Broader Phenomenon

We've seen how users and their communities shaped the windsurfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding industries and we observe that open source software communities have and continue to shape the software industry. Are these unique cases or are they representative of a broader phenomenon? It appears that users will innovate whenever they have the means and interest to do so. The following four examples show that community-based innovation has been influential in shaping product classes, industries, and even scientific disciplines for hundreds of years.

21.2.1. The Automobile

Franz (1999) describes innovations in automotive accessories made by middle-class American leisure travelers during the early 1900s. She reports that users built and added such features as radiator hoods, safety devices, interior heaters, automobile tops, trunks, reclining seats, and electric ignitions to their cars. Some even replaced the standard body altogether. "The rewards of tinkering lay... in the cultural space of leisure where amateurs produced their own narratives of ingenuity and claimed knowledge of the new machine" (Franz 1999, p.149).

Many of these innovators shouldered the cost of disseminating news of their innovations to other automobile enthusiasts. In the early 1900s, a high number of journals for automobile enthusiasts"written by and for devotees of the new `sport'" (Franz 1999, p.198)published innovator-written "how-to" articles. Existing manufacturers often learned of innovations via the innovators themselves, through requests for repairs, phone calls suggesting that the manufacturer adopt the innovations, and articles in the hobbyist journals (one of the journals was sponsored by Ford). Despite these avenues for information transfer and the fact that many innovating users did not patent their innovations, substantial time lags existed between the time an innovation was made and communicated to other users and when manufacturers incorporated it into commercial products.

21.2.2. The Personal Computer

As is well known, the personal computer revolution was not instigated by R&D scientists and engineers toiling in well-equipped labs. The personal computer was initially developed by hobbyists working after hours in garages, warehouses, basements, and bedrooms (Freiberger and Swaine 2000). These individuals triggered a revolution through their own fascination with technology and willingness to openly share hard-won technical insights with fellow enthusiasts through local computer clubs (such as the Homebrew Computer Club) and hobbyist electronics magazines such as Popular Electronics and Radio Electronics. Over time, many hobbyists started companies to sell copies of their work to those unwilling or unable to construct their own. In fact, many well-known names in the computer and software industry today, including Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Wozniak, were active hobbyists before they became entrepreneurs.

21.2.3. User Firms in the 18th Century Iron Industry

We've seen many examples of individual users working together, but there are also examples of user firms working together. All firms use products that they do not sell to consumerse.g., the information technology activities of investment banks. Allen's (1983) study of the 18^th century iron industry found that firms cooperated and shared information pertaining to the design and construction of blast furnaces. Improved blast furnace design increased the temperature of the blast and significantly reduced fuel consumption. According to Allen, the science behind blast furnace technology was not well understood. No one could predict how design changes would affect furnace performance, so development took the form of trial-and-error learning. Firms were limited in their ability to independently experiment as construction costs were high. By sharing experiences with different designs, firms could multiply the number of experiments from which to learn and collectively improve the technology.

21.2.4. Amateur Astronomy

Users also contributed innovations and discoveries to the scientific disciplines. For example, amateurs played a significant role in the development of astronomy equipment (Lankford 1981). They pioneered the use of reflecting telescopes and applied photographic techniques to the study of the stars. Amateurs published papers in journals alongside professionals, received the same awards, and attended the same meetings. The activities of professionals and amateurs were similar, but because amateurs were allowed to take greater risks than professionals (who were concerned about their careers), the two groups often came into conflict. By the early 1900s, amateurs were unable to compete with the activities of trained astrophysicists, largely because only those with specialized training were allowed to access the increasingly sophisticated and expensive technologies housed within universities and research institutions. By restricting access to tools and technology, professionals effectively limited the ability of amateurs to contribute to and challenge the field.

Today thousands of amateurs are once again making meaningful contributions to the field of astronomy. A revolution triggered by three new and inexpensive technologies has reignited amateur astronomy over the past two decades (Ferris 2002). First, there was the creation of the Dobsonian, a powerful telescope built from inexpensive materials:

In the early 1950s, John Dobson spied a 12-inch piece of porthole glass on a friend's table and realized that it could be polished with sand into a reflecting telescope mirror. As an ascetic monk with no money, he was forced to scrounge for materials, cobbling the mount from such humble objects as a plywood box, the cardboard cores of garden hose reels, and roof shingles. Then he pointed his homemade contraption at the moonand was astonished by how much detail he could see. Craters, mountains, crags leapt to life. "It was like I was coming in for a landing," he says. His eventual design for an affordable Newtonian reflecting telescope would later be named the Dobsonian (Campbell 2004).

Dobson actively reached out to other enthusiasts and provided them with instructions for building the telescopes. Enthusiasts willing to forego shortcuts can build a Dobsonian for about $20; for a few hundred dollars they can assemble one using materials available at most hardware stores or from a kit. Then came the creation of the CCD, a highly light-sensitive chip able to record very faint starlight with far greater accuracy than a photograph. Finally, the Internet multiplied the power of individual efforts by enabling rapid collaborative work.

Armed with Dobsonian telescopes and CCD sensors, thousands of amateurs are exploring space and recording events that might otherwise go unnoticed by professionals. This community of globally linked amateurs share their observations and expertise within minutes via email, community web sites, and mailing lists as they race to document, understand, and corroborate their findings. They also meet from time to time at meetings and conferences, and keep abreast of developments through magazines.

In these examples, we see the importance of use and community. Use drives the emergence and recognition of heterogeneous needs and desires. Community allows rapid experimentation and allows individuals with differing expertise to bring their skills and knowledge to bear on a particular problem. Users in a wide variety of fields work within communities where the open exchange of ideas, prototypes, and resources is commonplace.

Although communities are rarely created for the express purpose of encouraging and supporting innovation, many communities fulfill this function. The social structure provided by communities facilitates the development of user innovations by making resourcesideas, expertise, skills, and physical resourcesmore easily accessible and by creating incentives that support the sharing of resources and the creation and diffusion of innovation.