This paper overviews previous research on user innovation and discusses the issues that still need to be resolved in this field. Some researchers, such as von Hippel and his colleagues, examined phenomena and concepts characterized by specific user involvement in the innovation process. However, we have not necessarily understood what this field has revealed as a whole, because, barring a few exceptions, scholars have neither comprehensively reviewed the literature on user innovation nor clarified future problems to be considered in user innovation research. Therefore, this paper focuses on three topics. First, I comprehensively review previous studies on user innovation and examine their findings. Consequently, this paper clarifies the common characteristics of most previous studies focusing on "knowledge creation" at the early stage of innovation, but not on the realizing process of user innovation. Second, this paper explains why existing literature on user innovation does not consider the realizing process of innovation and points out the necessity of a new perspective for this process. The discussion focuses on two problems the definition of "lead user" and "user innovation" and a methodological problem in existing studies. To better understand the user innovation process, the mechanism behind the realizing process of user innovation must be explored. Specifically, this paper motivates the focus on cooperation between users and firms as a new perspective of user innovation research. Finally, a new research topic generated by the above discussion is examined. Specifically, I focus on the concepts of resource dependence and power and point out the necessity of considering how firms can realize user innovation with asymmetry of power between users and firms.
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