Eric von Hippel (born August 27, 1941) is an American 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 in developing the concept of user innovation – that end-users, rather than manufacturers, are responsible for a large amount of innovation. In order to describe this phenomenon, in 1986 he introduced the term lead user.
Eric von Hippel is the son of the material scientist and physicist Arthur Robert von Hippel, who was also a professor at MIT. His great uncle is the German ophthalmologist Eugen von Hippel.
von Hippel has been awarded the EU Innovation Luminary Award (2015), the Schumpeter School Prize (2017), and the Portugal Medal of Science (2020). He is a member of the Advisory Board of Patient Innovation (https://patient-innovation.com), a nonprofit, international, multilingual, free venue for patients and caregivers of any disease to share their innovations.
Early life
Eric von Hippel grew up in suburban Weston, MA with his parents, three brothers, and one sister. In his early years, Eric attended public school within the town, but then moved on to the Cambridge School of Weston – a private progressive school – for 8th grade, as well as his later years. Even as a young child, outside of the classroom, one of Eric's favorite pastimes was to try to create and invent new things. Much of his inspiration came from his father, Arthur Robert von Hippel, who was also a professor at MIT.
Education
For his undergraduate degree, Eric von Hippel attended Harvard College. In an interview with Eric, he stated that he chose Harvard over MIT for the opportunity to pursue Liberal Arts. His decision to major in Economics came after he explored courses in Biology and History, and found that neither was particularly the right fit for him. After pursuing several inventions post undergraduate, Eric returned to school for his Masters in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. From there, he went on to start his own company, worked at management consultant McKinsey and Co., and eventually studied at Carnegie Mellon University for his Ph.D. in Innovation.
Degrees
University of Vaasa Ph.D. 2018 (Hon) Hamburg University of Technology Ph.D. 2013 (Hon) Copenhagen Business School Ph.D. 2007 (Hon) Ludwig-Maximillians Universität München Ph.D. 2004 (Hon) Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. 1974 Massachusetts Institute of Technology S.M. 1966 Harvard College B.A. 1964
Major works
Von Hippel has published three books to date. All are published under Creative Commons licenses, and electronic copies can be obtained by anyone at no cost. These books are titled (1) The Sources of Innovation (1988); (2) Democratizing Innovation(2005); and Free Innovation (2017).
Major topics covered in these books and also in many research articles follow.
Innovation by lead users
User innovation occurs when individuals or firms that actually use a product or service develop what they need for themselves. This is in contrast to producer innovation, where firms develop products for sale to users. Eric von Hippel was one of the first to explore this phenomenon in depth. He found that innovation by users differed from innovation by producers in a number of important ways. For example, products developed and sold by producers are typically intended to profitably serve the average needs of a wide range of people, and therefore may fit the needs of specific customers only approximately. In contrast, users develop or modify products to fit their own needs very precisely.