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

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

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

Consumers are also behind the invention of dishwasher (a social person who wants to facilitate the cleaning of the dinner), the telephone (an engineer who wanted to talk to his wife upstairs from the basement lab), plastic contact lens (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 rent their San Francisco apartment).

Consumers are a major source of disruptive innovation, but they are often overlooked. We recently published an analysis of 60 cases of disruptive innovation in 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 nearly half of the innovations we identified came from users rather than manufacturers.

Combining “need for knowledge” and “knowledge for a solution”

Users have a unique up-close view of a problem—and know where current solutions fail. Technical experts and existing manufacturers have a clearer idea of ​​what potential solutions might look like, but they are nowhere near the need. By combining users’ “need knowledge” with their own “solution knowledge,” companies can unlock a wealth of opportunities for growth and competitive advantage.

Disruptive ideas for B2C, products and services often arise from individual consumers seeking to satisfy 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, the doctor 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 research found that products offering dramatically new functionality are more likely to be developed by users and often arise at times when customer needs change rapidly. On the other hand, innovations with high technological novelty are more likely to be generated by producers who have the necessary technical expertise. They usually arise at times of rapid technological change.

Our research questions existing thinking about disruptive innovation. The narrative that goes back to businessman Clayton Christensen is that disruption comes from startups and other new players in the market, while large incumbents generally lag behind. Users are seen as part of the problem. When your customers keep asking for the same thing over and over, there isn’t much room for innovation.

But our research shows that there is no single template for disruptive innovation, and consumers can be a source of brilliant ideas, not a barrier. While companies often look to users for input on how to modify existing designs and innovate around the margins, we’ve found that they can also generate disruptive, game-changing innovations.

Tips for supporting disruptive innovation

So how can your company uncover truly disruptive consumer innovation? First, create a culture of open innovation that values ​​insights from outside the organization. Although the technical geniuses in your R&D department are experts in how to build something new, they are not the sole authority on what you should build. Our research shows that it is especially important to look for user-generated disruptions at times when customer needs are changing rapidly.

Talk to your customers and create channels for dialogue and engagement. Most companies regularly survey consumers and conduct focus groups. But to identify truly disruptive ideas, you need to go beyond reactions to existing products and look at unmet needs and pain points. Customer complaints also offer insight into how existing solutions fail. AI tools facilitate the monitoring of user communities online and analyze customer feedback, 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 functionality. Users also gather offline. At sporting events, you may find athletes DIYing customized solutions to unmet needs. Mountain bikes were invented in the 1970s by riders who built custom bikes called clunkers to explore beautiful off-road landscapes in California.

Focus on leading users who are ahead of the trends. Lead users are often the first to see the growing user needs that will dominate in the future, and they can benefit from new solutions. Research shows that lead users’ ideas are far more commercially valuable than those of the average customer. However, take their input with a grain of salt, as lead users sometimes value niche functionality that mainstream customers won’t care about. You can also search for lead users embedded in your organization – for example, employees who work for a car company because they love cars.

Finally, explore co-creation initiatives that encourage direct collaboration with consumer innovators. For example, run a contest where customers submit ideas for new products or features, some of which can be truly disruptive. Or sponsor hackathons that bring together users with needs and technical experts to design solutions.

Companies are always looking for an innovation edge, but they often miss one of the most powerful sources of innovative 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 Rush is a professor of digital economy at Kühne LUniversity of Logistics in Germany. Tim Schweissfurth is Professor of Organizational Design and Collaboration Engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg in Germany.