Lead users in the diffusion process

The relationship between early adopters of innovations and followers is addressed in the lead user model developed by Eric von Hippel (1988). In analysing the sources of innovations in the industry of professional instruments, Hippel (1976) discovers that a majority of the innovations were invented not by manufacturers of the respective product line but by users of instruments. Hippel explained these user inventors with different benefits of new products for manufactures and users. Sometimes users can yield a higher benefit of a new product than manufactures, for instance if manufactures cannot gain market share with a new product but would instead cannibalise their existing products. If users profit more from innovations they have a higher incentive to innovate. 

Although the lead user model is basically a model of innovation and not a model of diffusion, the question that is important for the international diffusion - why other users follow in adopting the innovation -, is addressed by the lead user theory as well. First, Hippel (1988, p. 107) assumes the existence of lead users, because the s-shaped diffusion curve of new products can regularly be observed. He then explains the adoption of the lead user innovation by other users with a second condition (the first condition is that users have the highest profit firom an innovation). Lead users are users who face needs that will be general in the marketplace - but face them months or years before the bulk of that marketplace encounters them (Hippel 1986, p. 786). In essence, Hippel s diffusion mechanism is a change in the adoption stimuli. 

Based on his findings, Hippel (1986) develops a strategy of how manufacturers can use lead users in order to get new innovations. Users with extreme demands, V. Hippel argues, exist that have either already invented a technology themselves or have some experience and ideas as to what a new technology should look like. According to Hippel (1987), in order to identify a lead user, there must be a trend, for instance continuous improvements of a technical characteristic such as precision, size etc., on which lead users are found at the front. Urban and Hippel (1988) showed in a case study that lead users could indeed be identified. 

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