that bowl lead user research provides companies with a systematic process for developing breakthrough new products and services the co author is a busy exciting new tool are Eric von Hippel the MIT Sloan School of Management Mary sonic division scientist at 3m and Joan churchill an organizational psychologist in this introductory video you'll learn what lead user methods can do for your organization you'll hear how 3m divisions have benefited from lead user studies and see an example oven actually do users study carried out at 3am time lead user methodology evolved from Eric one hit balls path-breaking research into the sources and innovation his research showed that a select group a lead users have been the actual inventors a many of the most successful products and services for consumers and industry parlayed users read user's have two characteristics first they have a high incentive to solve a problem and so they may innovate after all you know necessity is the mother invention second they are ahead of the target market in an important dimension so that what
in the present is what the market as a whole will want in the future let me give you an example of one or two lead user innovations take Tim berners-lee the inventor of the World Wide Web Tam
needed hypertext and network computers for his own work that's why he developed it it was a lead user innovation because the market as a whole as you all know then followed and became a major cultural phenomenon during the course of a study team seek out lead users both within the target markets and lead users in analogous fields and other industries as well innovation in automotive braking systems illustrates the value of looking for lead users outside as well as within
your targeted markets many the safety features that we takin in into ordinary count nowadays in automobiles where actually developed in aerospace first for example the braking systems were developed their because the aircraft people cared a lot more about stopping in aircraft who was before the into the runway so you could see that the incentive to do the same stopping problem was there an air space as well but in an exaggerated form and you can bring it into the auto field from this advance analog market the team locates lead users using a telephone networking process it works a lot like tracking down a hot new story team members typically start out the search by getting allister expert names through such means as electronic searches scanning current trade journals or contacting their industry friends for some expert named then they simply begin calling people on the list in asking a question such as who do you know that is doing leading edge work on the subjective X I'm lead user studies enable 3m divisions to identify leading-edge market opportunities that were not apparent with traditional methods such as focus groups and large customer surveys studies have resulted in major new product approaches for a number of 3m divisions for example in one study just completed the result was a whole family of concepts for radically new products that will be brought to market soon into other recent ones the goal was opportunity identification in both these cases the team uncovered promising entry markets and applications for a very important new 3m technologies
lead user studies have also been used to identify long-range growth strategiesin fact that was one outcome on the medical products steady you learn about shortly now let's take a look at a lead users study carried out by three m's medical surgical division this division produces surgical drapes and other related a sepsis control products for the surgical setting our business unit in the medical surgical division lunch to lead user study to identify new approaches for preventing patient infections the decline in effectiveness have many antibiotics today makes this a very important problem in medicine for study a cross-functional team was assembled a top-notch people from product development marketing and manufacturing all team members had previously made major innovation contributions for medical-surgical business unit in phase 1 management and the research team do the homework to begin the lead user study the team and key managers in our business work closely together to define the general types of products and markets have interest and the level of innovation that was desired the team also did a scan of trade literature and talked with some other key customers these activities give us an overall sense