Democratizing Innovation is the title of a book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

 by Eric von Hippel

Eric von Hippel

Eric von Hippel is an economist and a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, specializing in the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He is best known for his work developing the concept of user innovation – that end-users, rather than manufacturers, are...

. It describes how people participate in the development of products they use. For example, von Hippel in the fifth chapter uses the history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 of mountain biking

Mountain biking

Mountain biking is a sport which consists of riding bicycles off-road, often over rough terrain, using specially adapted mountain bikes. Mountain bikes share similarities with other bikes, but incorporate features designed to enhance durability and performance in rough terrain.Mountain biking can...

 to propound that users can also "be sophisticated developers". The MIT Press published

Publishing

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 the book in 2005. It is licensed under a Creative Commons license

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...

 and is available as a downloadable PDF document on http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ.htm. Hippel (p. 2) summarized the book as follows.

In this book I explain in detail how the emerging process of user-centric, democratized innovation works. I also explain how innovation by users provides a very necessary complement to and feedstock for manufacturer innovation.

List of chapters

1. Introduction and Overview
2. Development of Products by Lead Users
3. Why Many Users Want Custom Products
4. Users' Innovate-or-Buy Decisions
5. Users' Low-Cost Innovation Niches
6. Why Users Often Freely Reveal Their Innovations
7. Innovation Communities
8. Adapting Policy to User Innovation
9. Democratizing Innovation
10. Application: Searching for Lead User Innovations
11. Application: Toolkits for User Innovation
    Toolkits for User Innovation
    Toolkits for user innovation allow manufacturers to " abandon their attempts to understand user needs in detail in favor of transferring need-related aspects of product and service development to users along with an appropriate toolkit"...
    
     and Custom Design
12. Linking User Innovation to Other Phenomena and Fields

See also

• Wikiversity:Eric Von Hippel:Democratizing Innovation - A reading group using the book