Premium
Transferring process equipment innovations from user‐innovators to equipment manufacturing firms
Author(s) -
Hippel Eric
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
randd management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.253
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1467-9310
pISSN - 0033-6807
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9310.1977.tb01270.x
Subject(s) - manufacturing engineering , product (mathematics) , business , order (exchange) , process (computing) , manufacturing , manufacturing process , user innovation , telecommunications equipment , semiconductor device fabrication , commerce , computer science , industrial organization , marketing , engineering , telecommunications , materials science , electrical engineering , operating system , geometry , mathematics , finance , composite material , wafer
Product users are not usually thought of as product innovators. We have found, however, that 67|X% of the significant process equipment innovations in the two fields of semiconductor manufacture and electronic subassembly manufacture were in fact developed by equipment users rather than equipment manufacturers. Our analysis of the process by which these user innovations are transferred to the first firm to manufacture them commercially shows three major patterns: 46|X% transferred by multiple user‐manufacturer interactions; 21|X% transferred via a direct purchase order from the inventive user; 8|X% manufactured by a user firm for commercial sale. A final 25|X%, we found, were apparently not transferred, but were reinvented by the equipment manufacturing firm. Inventive user firms and adopting equipment manufacturing firms are characterized, and the implications of our findings discussed.