Sources and Patterns of Innovation in a Consumer Products Field:
Innovations in Sporting Equipment
1.0: Introduction
To date, empirical research into the functional sources of innovation has explored
only industrial products and processes. In this research, we provide the first exploration
of the functional sources of innovation in a category of consumer durables. Specifically,
we explore the innovation and commercialization histories of 57 equipment innovations
developed for three relatively new sports: skateboarding, snowboarding, and windsurfing.
In each sport studied, we found the same general pattern of innovation activity.
Equipment for the new sport was not developed by existing sports equipment
manufacturing companies – even ones in closely allied fields (e.g., snowboarding
equipment was not developed by makers of other winter sports equipment such as skis or
sleds). Instead, innovations in skateboarding, snowboarding and windsurfing equipment
were typically developed by a few early expert participants in those sports, lead users,
and also by some of those same lead users after they founded small companies to produce
their innovations for sale.
The innovating users in these sports were generally very young – in their teens or
early twenties – and technically unsophisticated. They evolved their innovations via
learning-by-doing in their novel and rapidly evolving fields. They would begin by
building a prototype using simple tools and materials, immediately try it out under real
field conditions, discover problems, make revisions within hours, and then try again. The
small companies founded by some of these innovators began as lifestyle firms, in which
expert users supported their primary activity of playing at and refining their sport by
making and selling copies of the sporting equipment they had developed from their
basement or spare room or garage. Over time, some of these firms closed as the interests
of their founders changed, but others survived and evolved into major producers of
equipment for the sport.
We will argue that the pattern of innovation by users makes sense in these fields
for two reasons – the allocation of "sticky" information between lead users and
manufacturers and the relative expectations of innovation-related benefits held by users
and manufacturers. With respect to "sticky" information, the rich and complicated