Are you attractive enough? : An empirical analysis on user innovators' characteristics and the creation of new social ventures
Abstract
"Recent research reports that user entrepreneurship can surge in times of crisis for the common good of society. This new social-oriented research direction of user entrepreneurship could provide stimulating and relevant insights for both the theory and practice of user innovation because it challenges some of its key concepts, such as innovation attractiveness and lead userness. The present study contributes to the nascent theory of user entrepreneurship for social purposes by exploring in much more detail the relationships between various user-level variables, the attractiveness of user-generated solutions, and new social venture creation. In particular, the research question of the present study is as follows: Which features of user innovators increase the attractiveness of solutions and promote the creation of new social ventures? To answer this question, we conducted a quantitative study of the main characteristics of 370 user innovations in the field of healthcare. The results show that some characteristics of the user innovator, such as the pursuit of hedonic motives, are positively related to social innovation attractiveness and new venture creation."