The role of users for exaptive innovation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Tim G. Schweisfurth
• Subject Area: Management and Marketing
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548104920

Innovation usually describes the discovery of new scientific effects or the development of technologies to meet a new need. A third type of innovation is exaptation, where existing solutions and technologies are repurposed to address new problems. One example is the development of the endoscopic third ventriculostomy (a less invasive alternative to cerebral shunts for the treatment of obstructive hydrocephalus) by a surgeon in the early 1990s. He initially used medical devices from the field of urology and applied a new method to solve a problem in the field of brain surgery. As in this case, users, who are involved in about 50% of innovation in some fields - and possibly even more in certain fields such as off-label therapy - are often the source of exaptations as they use existing artifacts for new purposes. The project aims to explore the link between user innovation and exaptation, which has been largely overlooked in the existing literature. The research is motivated by two primary observations: (1) the substantial contribution of exaptation to innovation, particularly in sectors such as pharmaceuticals and medical technology, where a significant percentage of innovation is exaptive, and (2) the expected increase in exaptive innovation due to digitalization. This underscores the importance of understanding how users contribute to the exaptive innovation process through their unique insights and adaptations. Phase 1 aims to better understand the conditions, processes and mechanisms underlying user-driven exaptation. This work package aims to inductively develop a theoretical model of user-driven exaptation and diffusion at the individual process level. Phase 2 takes a dynamic view of the innovation cycle within specific product categories (i.e. medical fields such as urology, neurology, etc.). Through interviews and with reference to the results from phase 1, propositions will be generated that examine the interplay between new user techniques, product innovation and exaptation in different product categories. The aim is to show abductively how and when users drive exaptation in therapeutic domains by employing existing products in innovative ways. In phase 3, we try to understand how and under which conditions user knowledge influences exaptive innovation in companies. In a deductive study, we want to find out whether collaboration with innovative users promotes exaptive innovation in companies. In several hypotheses we test the relationship between the collaboration of users and companies, the knowledge distance, the absorptive capacity of companies and the resulting exaptive innovation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants