Welcome Empirical research is finding that users rather than manufacturers are the actual developers of many or most new products and services, and that they are a major locus of innovative activity in the economy. This finding opens up new questions and avenues for exploration in fields ranging from economics to management of technology to organizational behaviour to marketing research. Examples are patterns in innovation by users, characteristics of innovating users, design of a user-centered innovation process, economics of a distributed innovation process that includes users as innovators, and social welfare implications of innovations by users. We have set up this website to provide a convenient repository for papers on topics related to innovation by users. Our goal is to establish a community in which research information related to the topic of user innovation can be freely exchanged. Contributing We invite authors to post their research papers related to user innovation. Authors can submit working papers, abstracts and related links for posting on this site. We welcome quantitative data analyses using a variety of methodological designs (e.g. simulations, field studies, archival studies, laboratory experiments). We also welcome qualitative research studies involving methodologies such as case studies, studies using participant-observation, and ethnographic studies. Networking Authors and non-authors such as graduate students and practitioners with a serious interest in the topic of user innovation are also invited to add themselves to the site research directory, so that our community can become steadily more comprehensive and more useful. Email list You may wish to join our email lists: The Announce list if for notifications regarding new papers uploaded to our website and for announcements. Join the Talk list if you wish to participate in discussions among community members. Related site You may also wish to visit the site opensource.mit.edu. It contains some downloadable papers related to user innovation in software.