Student or educator? Sign up with your school email and get 6 months of Pro free.
CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 207

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 11 of the 11 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Synergies among Producer Firms, Lead Users, and User Communities: The Case of the LEGO Producer–User Ecosystem

Open access
Hienerth, Christoph, Lettl, Christopher, Keinz, Peter·2014·Journal of Product Innovation Management
DOI 10.1111/jpim.12127
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

While many firms today proactively involve users in their new product development efforts using a wide variety of methods such as the lead user method, firm‐hosted user communities, or mass customization toolkits, some pioneering firms are experimenting with the creation of sustainable producer–user ecosystems designed for the continuous exploration and exploitation of business opportunities. In this paper, the functioning of such ecosystems is studied with particular emphasis on the synergies they can yield. Based on an explorative and longitudinal multiple case study design, the producer–user ecosystem of the firm LEGO is analyzed, and three main actors in the ecosystem are identified: entrepreneurial lead users who aim to start their own businesses, a vibrant user community, and the LEGO company as the focal producer firm and facilitator for multiple user‐to‐user and user‐to‐producer interactions. Our study reveals three kinds of synergies: (1) reduced risk for entrepreneurial lead users and the focal producer firm, (2) the extension of the design space of the focal producer firm's products, and (3) the creation of buzz within the user community. Finally, the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings for innovation researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/jpim.12127

Cites

11 of 11 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 11 references

Research works printed but not linked: 76

  1. 10.1002/smj.821 · DOI · Paper page
  2. 10.1509/jmkg.69.3.19.66363 · DOI · Paper page
  3. 10.1108/00438020110389227 · DOI · Paper page
  4. 10.1016/j.respol.2006.04.012 · DOI · Paper page
  5. 10.1287/orsc.1100.0618 · DOI · Paper page
  6. 10.1108/07363760310489689 · DOI
  7. 10.1177/0149206309353944 · DOI · Paper page
  8. 10.1287/orsc.2.1.40 · DOI · Paper page
  9. 10.1509/jmkg.67.3.19.18657 · DOI · Paper page
  10. Chesbrough H., 2003, Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology
  11. 10.1177/0266242696151005 · DOI · Paper page
  12. 10.1177/0170840606067250 · DOI · Paper page
  13. 10.5465/amr.1991.4279496 · doi:10.5465/amr.1991.4279496 · Paper page
  14. 10.5465/amj.2007.24160888 · DOI · Paper page
  15. 10.1002/smj.1968 · DOI · Paper page
  16. Fournier S., 2002, Launching the BMW Z3 roadster, Harvard Business School Case Study Teaching Note, 1
  17. 10.1111/j.1540-5885.2008.00321.x · DOI · Paper page
  18. 10.1509/jmkg.73.5.103 · DOI · Paper page
  19. 10.1287/orsc.1120.0794 · DOI · Paper page
  20. 10.1111/j.0737-6782.2004.00094.x · DOI · Paper page
  21. 10.1007/s11002-007-9029-7 · DOI · Paper page
  22. 10.1111/j.1540-5885.2010.00768.x · DOI · Paper page
  23. 10.1287/mnsc.1090.1077 · DOI · Paper page
  24. 10.1016/S0048-7333(02)00006-9 · DOI · Paper page
  25. 10.1016/S0048-7333(03)00049-0 · DOI · Paper page
  26. 10.1111/j.1540-5885.2006.00203.x · DOI · Paper page
  27. 10.1111/j.1540-5885.2008.00325.x · DOI · Paper page
  28. Gillham B., 2000, Case study research methods
  29. Granitz N. A., 1996, Virtual community: A sociocognitive Analysis, Advances in Consumer Research, 23, 161
  30. 10.1111/1540-5885.930213 · doi:10.1111/1540-5885.930213 · Paper page
  31. 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2006.00430.x · DOI · Paper page
  32. 10.1016/j.lrp.2011.09.009 · DOI · Paper page
  33. 10.1111/j.1540-5885.2011.00869.x · DOI
  34. Iansiti M., 2004, Strategy as ecology, Harvard Business Review, 82, 68
  35. 10.5465/AMJ.2005.17407912 · DOI · Paper page
  36. 10.1287/orsc.1050.0156 · DOI · Paper page
  37. 10.1080/09537320310001601531 · DOI · Paper page
  38. 10.7146/jod.6346 · doi:10.7146/jod.6346
  39. 10.1142/S1363919608002011 · DOI
  40. Koerner B. I., 2006, Geeks, Wired, 2, 106
  41. 10.1016/S0263-2373(99)00004-3 · DOI · Paper page
  42. 10.1086/321948 · DOI · Paper page
  43. 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2006.00431.x · DOI · Paper page
  44. 10.1287/mnsc.48.8.1042.171 · DOI · Paper page
  45. 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2004.00362.x · DOI · Paper page
  46. Maxwell J. A., 1996, Qualitative research design
  47. 10.1509/jmkg.66.1.38.18451 · DOI · Paper page
  48. Miles M. B., 1994, Qualitative data analysis
  49. 10.1287/mnsc.46.12.1513.12076 · DOI · Paper page
  50. 10.1086/426607 · DOI · Paper page
  51. 10.1287/orsc.1070.0325 · DOI · Paper page
  52. 10.1111/1540-5885.1520151 · DOI
  53. Ogawa S., 2006, Reducing the risks of new product development, MIT Sloan Management Review, 47, 65
  54. 10.1287/mnsc.1060.0623 · DOI · Paper page
  55. 10.1111/1540-5885.1860388 · doi:10.1111/1540-5885.1860388
  56. 10.1108/03090569810232237 · DOI · Paper page
  57. Pine B. J., 1993, Making mass customization work, Harvard Business Review, 71, 108
  58. 10.1111/j.1540-5885.2010.00759.x · DOI
  59. 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2006.00433.x · DOI · Paper page
  60. 10.1287/orsc.1090.0428 · DOI · Paper page
  61. 10.1007/s12130-999-1026-0 · DOI · Paper page
  62. 10.1016/j.intmar.2009.10.002 · DOI
  63. 10.1086/209434 · DOI · Paper page
  64. 10.1002/cb.183 · DOI · Paper page
  65. 10.1007/s11002-006-9009-3 · DOI · Paper page
  66. 10.1002/sej.15 · DOI · Paper page
  67. 10.1111/1540-5885.1520124 · DOI · Paper page
  68. 10.1287/mnsc.1080.0884 · DOI · Paper page
  69. Thomke S., 2002, Customers as innovators: A new way to create value, Harvard Business Review, 80, 74
  70. 10.1509/jmkg.72.6.65 · DOI
  71. 10.1287/mnsc.32.7.791 · DOI · Paper page
  72. 10.1287/mnsc.44.5.629 · DOI · Paper page
  73. 10.1111/1540-5885.1840247 · DOI · Paper page
  74. 10.7551/mitpress/2333.001.0001 · DOI · Paper page
  75. 10.1093/icc/dtm005 · DOI · Paper page
  76. Yin R. K., 1994, Case study research: Desing and methods

Cited by

See all 207

Metadata

Authors
Hienerth, C., Lettl, C., & Keinz, P.
Venue
Journal of Product Innovation Management
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2013-12-06
Volume
31
Issue
4
Pages
848-866
ISSN
  • 0737-6782 (ISSN-L)
  • 1540-5885
DOI
10.1111/jpim.12127
OpenAlex
W1532066980
Cited by
207
References
11
FWCI
14.14
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze
Licence
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor)

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Synergies among Producer Firms, Lead Users, and User Communities: The Case of the LEGO Producer–User Ecosystem. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/jpim.12127
The paper
Hienerth, C., Lettl, C., & Keinz, P. (2014). Synergies among Producer Firms, Lead Users, and User Communities: The Case of the LEGO Producer–User Ecosystem. Journal of Product Innovation Management. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12127

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.