Wer ist Eric von Hippel? Hier die Antwort von Wikipedia:

Eric von Hippel is an economist and a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, specializing in the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He is best known for his work developing the concept of user innovation – that end-users, rather than manufacturers, are responsible for a large amount of new innovation. In order to describe this phenomenon, he introduced the term lead user in 1986.

via: Exciting Commerce