Listen to your technology users — they have led to the most disruptive innovations in history

In 1971, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the precursor to the modern Internet, had approximately 1,000 users. THE @ sign was an obscure symbol. Then, engineer Ray Tomlinson changed everything by creating a system to send messages to other computers on the ARPANET network, using the @ sign to indicate who each message was intended for. Email was born.

One of the greatest inventions of the digital age wasn’t created by a company looking for a product to sell. It was concocted by a user with a problem to solve. Tomlinson said he did not fully realize the importance of his invention until almost 25 years later, in 1993.

Users are also behind the invention of dishwasher (a socialite who seeks to make cleaning up dinner parties easier), the phone (an engineer who wanted to speak to his wife upstairs from his basement laboratory), the plastic contact lens (an optometrist tired of wearing thick, heavy glasses) and even modern tech companies like Airbnb (the founders rented an air mattress in their living room to help pay the rent on their San Francisco apartment).

Users are a major source of disruptive innovation, but they are often overlooked. We recently published an analysis of 60 cases of disruptive innovation in the Journal of Product Innovation Managementfrom LASIK surgery to power tools. Our goal was to understand where disruptive innovation comes from. We were surprised to find that almost half of the innovations we identified came from users rather than producers.

Combining “knowledge of needs” and “knowledge of solutions”

Users get a unique, up-close view of a problem and know where current solutions fail. Existing technical experts and producers have a clearer idea of ​​what potential solutions might look like, but they are not as close to the needs. By combining users’ “needs knowledge” with their own “solution knowledge,” businesses can unlock a multitude of opportunities for growth and competitive advantage.

Disruptive ideas for B2C products and services often come from individual consumers looking to meet their own needs. Disruptive innovation in the B2B space can come from professionals looking for new tools or systems to do their jobs more efficiently. For example, physician John H. Gibbon and his wife Mary developed the heart-lung machine and used it to perform one of the first successful open-heart surgeries.

Our study found that products offering radically new features are more likely to be developed by users and often appear at a time when customer needs are rapidly changing. In contrast, innovations with high technological novelty are more likely to be generated by producers with the necessary technical expertise. These tend to arise in times of rapid technological change.

Our research challenges existing ideas about disruptive innovation. The story dating back to businessman Clayton Christensen is that disruption comes from startups and other new players in a market, while large incumbents typically lag behind. Users are seen as part of the problem. When your customers are asking for the same thing over and over again, there’s not much room to innovate.

But our research shows that there is not just one model of disruptive innovation and that users can be a source of ingenious ideas rather than an obstacle. While companies often look to users for guidance on how to tweak existing projects and innovate at the margins, we’ve found that they can also drive disruptive and game-changing innovation.

Tips for supporting disruptive innovation

So, how can your company bring truly disruptive innovation to users? First, create a culture of open innovation that values ​​knowledge from outside the organization. Even though the technical geniuses in your R&D department are experts in how to build something new, they are not the only authorities on what you should build. Our research suggests that it is especially important to look for user-generated disruption when their needs are rapidly changing.

Talk to your customers and create channels for dialogue and engagement. Most companies regularly survey users and hold focus groups. But to identify truly disruptive ideas, you need to look beyond reactions to existing products and probe into unmet needs and problems. Customer complaints also provide insight into the shortcomings of existing solutions. AI tools make it easier to monitor online user communities and analyze customer comments, reviews and complaints.

Keep your pulse on social media and online user communities where people share innovative ways to adapt existing products and wish lists for new features. Users also gather offline. At sporting events, you may see athletes tinkering with custom solutions to address unmet needs. Mountain bikes were invented in the 1970s by cyclists who cobbled together custom bikes, called clunkers, to explore California’s beautiful off-road landscapes.

Focus on core users who are ahead of trends. Lead users are often the first to see the growing consumer needs that will be dominant in the future, and they will benefit from new solutions. Research shows that the ideas of lead users have much more business value than those of the average customer. However, take their feedback with a grain of salt, as core users sometimes appreciate niche features that mainstream customers don’t care about. You can also look for core users embedded within your organization, such as employees who work for a car manufacturer because they are car enthusiasts.

Finally, explore co-creation initiatives that promote direct collaboration with innovative users. For example, hold a competition where customers submit ideas for new products or features, some of which could prove truly disruptive. Or sponsor hackathons that bring together users with needs and technical experts to design solutions.

Companies are always looking for an edge in innovation, but they often miss out on one of the most powerful sources of revolutionary ideas: their own users. By tapping into the vast pool of existing users and customers, you can harness their creativity and expertise to fuel truly disruptive innovation.

Christina Raasch is professor of digital economics at Kuhne LLogistics University in Germany. Tim Schweisfurth is a professor of organizational design and collaboration engineering at Hamburg University of Technology in Germany.