NESTA invited me along to the launch of a report on User-Led Innovation (ULI) by the University of Brighton’s CENTRIM and University of Sussex’s SPRU research centres.

The insightful, and timely, report focuses on how users, at individual and community levels, are changing the rules of innovation.  Though user-led innovation is nothing new, proliferating digital technologies and networks are serving as tools for users to power further innovations, and to connect with each other to share tools, techniques, ideas and feedback, to an unprecedented degree.

Focusing on video games, music, social networking and music software industries, the researchers have explored case study firms that are harnessing ULI through close and collaborative relationships with extensive user communities, such as music notation software company Sibelius, or that have emerged directly from communities of user innovators, such as games developers Splash Damage.

With companies based on ULI, such as Bebo and Last.fm, being sold on for millions just a few years after their creation, it’s hard to argue against the commercial value that ULI can potentially generate, and the social and public value of ULI is pretty easy to grasp too. However, the report’s authors go on to argue that policy-makers remain somewhat sceptical about the importance of ULI, noting that UK policy still suffers from a linear model of formal R&D ‘hangover’ and has only just begun to recognise the importance of users in innovation.

Realising the extent of user creativity and invention can perhaps only begin by adopting a policy of promoting ULI or, at the very least, thinking creatively around issues such as copyright law that currently serve as barriers to its take up.

Download the report here.