Is the Product Concept that the Lead User Produces Really Superior?

Technical Notes on Urban and von Hippel (1988)

Abstract

Along with the user innovation research having spread to a variety of fields, pioneering customer, which is called lead user, was regarded as someone who makes an innovation. This article attempts to critique and comment on Urban and von Hippel (1988) whose contributions are the followings; (1) identified the lead user for the first time, and (2) built a process to evaluate the product concept devised by the specified lead user and tested the concept that gained high evaluation from a third party. In addition, subsequent studies are reviewed to bring out questions as to whether the product concepts created by lead users are really superior.