From innovation to firm formation: Contributions by sports enthusiasts to the windsurfing, snowboarding & skateboarding industries

Abstract

Teams of employees at firms innovate. Scientists and engineers at universities and research institutions innovate. Inventors at private labs innovate. Regular people consume. Wrong! Regular people innovate, too. Users have been the source of many large and small innovations across a wide range of product classes, industries, and even scientific disciplines. In this paper I describe the contributions made by user innovators in the windsurfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding industries. © 2006 Springer-Verlag New York.