Author of the book Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel made the following remarks in a Gartner interview, earlier this year:

“When innovation becomes democratized, many traditional assumptions about innovation and the best ways to innovate are upended….When innovation resources are cheap and well diffused, what firms ought to do is let a thousand flowers bloom…then select the best flower. It no longer makes sense for corporate marketing researchers to go around asking passive consumers what kind of flower they would like, if only they could have it and then, after huge process efforts, decide to develop that flower.”

The same is true of technology solutions. Whereas von Hippel pointed this comment directly at manufacturing innovation, the IT floors of today are the machine factory floors of yesterday. In the information age, the medium of pr