Behavioral innovation: Pilot study and new big data analysis approach in household sector user innovation

• Published in: Research policy 2021-10, Vol.50 (8), p.103992, Article 103992
• Main Authors: von Hippel, Christiana D., Cann, Andrew B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavioral innovation; Feminist economics; Household sector innovation; Innovation diffusion; Technique innovation; User innovation
• ISSN: 0048-7333; 1873-7625
• DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2020.103992

•The new concept of behavioral innovation is proposed as an overarching category in contrast to product innovation.•Behavioral innovations are intangible problem-solving behaviors providing functionally novel benefits to user developers.•Pilots a novel big data analysis approach to identify innovations in user-generated content from online discussion forums.•Finds female gender and direct, grounded experience and expertise facilitate innovation in solving child-rearing problems.•Finds behavioral innovations are often diffused in response to specific need requests for help or advice from peers. Innovation researchers have begun to look beyond how users develop tangible objects or product innovations and moved to investigate the existence and impact of intangible user-developed innovations in techniques and services in the household sector . In this paper, to incorporate technique and service innovations and other varieties of intangible innovations not yet described in the literature into an efficient and encompassing typology, we propose the new concept of intangible Behavioral Innovation as an overarching category that stands in contrast to tangible product innovation. Behavioral innovation is defined as consisting of one or a connected sequence of intangible problem-solving activities that provide a functionally novel benefit to its user developer relative to previous practice. We demonstrate in a pilot study using a relatively novel big data-gathering and semantic analysis approach that behavioral innovation exists and can be identified in user-generated content posted openly online in peer-to-peer discussion forums relating to household sector activities such as parenting. The preponderance (N = 138) of the 168 user innovations captured in our samples of discussion comments were intangible behavioral innovations, most of which were developed by women. The majority of behavioral innovations identified were diffused by their user developers in response to specific requests for help or advice from peers in their online community. Thus, incorporating the new concept of intangible behavioral innovation into studies of user innovation's scope and significance in the household sector can serve to clarify which users innovate in our communities of interest, what and how they innovate, why they are triggered to diffuse their innovations peer-to-peer, and how their innovative activities might impact social welfare.