User innovators and their influence on innovation activities of firms in Finland

Statistics Finland added questions to the Finnish Community Innovation
Survey (CIS) for 2010 on the importance of user innovation. For firms
engaged in innovation activity during the three year period, 2008-2010,
30 per cent reported that user modified products were of high or medium
importance to them. For user developed products the figure was 13 per
cent. These firms, compared with those that did not rank user innovation
as highly, had a higher propensity to produce new to the market product
innovations and they were more active in producing product innovations
by themselves, by collaborating with others, by adapting and adopting
products from other firms, and by using products from other firms. The
results for user modified and user developed products were found to be
consistent with responses to a standard CIS question on whether the
product innovation of the firm was done by adapting products developed
by others, but the results were not sufficient to say that responses to
this question were a consequence, principally, of user innovation. The
wider implications of the findings are discussed along with the need for
confirmation of the findings in other countries. Both Portugal and
Switzerland have incorporated the Finnish CIS 2010 questions into their
CIS 2012 and have added additional questions which may show that
existing CIS data provide information on the presence of user
innovation.