Open and user innovation: involving extreme users

While users are more and more implied in companies ‘innovation process, some groups of people remain generally excluded from innovation, both because they do not have access to the output of innovation and because innovation is systematically designed without them. Yet, those excluded groups, be they disabled, ill, aged or on low-incomes, have – like lead users - unanswered needs and interest in innovating and – as extreme users - could be a source of inspiration for innovation for the general public. Inclusive innovation has highlighted this stake of innovating for and with excluded groups but a lot needs to be done to precise the different modalities of Inclusive Innovation, considering all excluded groups. What are the different ways of doing inclusive innovation in companies and institutions? What are the associated challenges for companies and institutions? Building on previous literature, a new framework is presented with a typology of inclusive innovation outcomes and processes. Each stage of these typologies are then detailed and associated challenges depicted. As open and user innovation increasingly enables users to participate in the design of products and services, some groups of people, such as persons with disabilities or illness, aged, or with low-incomes, remain excluded from both the processes of innovation and the use of new technologies. However, those excluded groups often meet the definition of "extreme users", those users with radical use that designers have to get inspiration from. Their limitations are indeed revealers of the defaults of a products or of unexpected needs. Considering the social stake of enabling anyone to participate to and benefit from innovation, some states and institutions have begun to promote Inclusive Innovation (Codagone, 2009). Researchers have started to conceptualize Inclusive Innovation (Guth, 2005; Utz and Dahlman, 2007) as innovation with and for excluded groups, with a focus in the literature on emerging countries. Yet, a lot needs to be done to specify the different modalities of Inclusive Innovation, considering all excluded groups. Research has not qualified yet the different ways of doing Inclusive Innovation in companies and institutions and the associated challenges have not been fully considered. Building on previous works on open and user innovation, universal design, and inclusive innovation, this paper presents a new framework to qualify those modalities of innovation opened to excluded groups and, based on a literature study, presents a landscape of the challenges of Inclusive Innovation.