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Democratizing Innovation

The acknowledgements section expresses gratitude to various academic mentors, collaborators, and industry colleagues who contributed to the author's research on democratization of innovation. It highlights the transition from individual academic relationships to a collaborative research community, facilitated by Dietmar Harhoff. The author also thanks family members for their support and emphasizes the inspiring environment at MIT.

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Oscar Cruz
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22 views4 pages

Democratizing Innovation

The acknowledgements section expresses gratitude to various academic mentors, collaborators, and industry colleagues who contributed to the author's research on democratization of innovation. It highlights the transition from individual academic relationships to a collaborative research community, facilitated by Dietmar Harhoff. The author also thanks family members for their support and emphasizes the inspiring environment at MIT.

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Oscar Cruz
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Acknowledgements

Early in my research on the democratization of innovation I was very for-


tunate to gain five major academic mentors and friends. Nathan Rosenberg,
Richard Nelson, Zvi Griliches, Edwin Mansfield, and Ann Carter all pro-
vided crucial support as I adopted economics as the organizing framework
and toolset for my work. Later, I collaborated with a number of wonderful
co-authors, all of whom are friends as well: Stan Finkelstein, Nikolaus
Franke, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel, Cornelius Herstatt, Ralph Katz,
Georg von Krogh, Karim Lakhani, Gary Lilien, Christian Luthje, Pamela
Morrison, William Riggs, John Roberts, Stephan Schrader, Mary Sonnack,
Stefan Thomke, Marcie Tyre, and Glen Urban. Other excellent research col-
laborators and friends of long standing include Carliss Baldwin, Sonali
Shah, Sarah Slaughter, and Lars Jeppesen.
At some point as interest in a topic grows, there is a transition from
dyadic academic relationships to a real research community. In my case, the
essential person in enabling that transition was my close friend and col-
league Dietmar Harhoff. He began to send wonderful Assistant Professors
(Habilitanden) over from his university, Ludwig Maximilians Universität in
Munich, to do collaborative research with me as MIT Visiting Scholars. They
worked on issues related to the democratization of innovation while at MIT
and then carried on when they returned to Europe. Now they are training
others in their turn.
I have also greatly benefited from close contacts with colleagues in
industry. As Director of the MIT Innovation Lab, I work together with
senior innovation managers in just a few companies to develop and try out
innovation tools in actual company settings. Close intellectual colleagues
and friends of many years standing in this sphere include Jim Euchner
from Pitney-Bowes, Mary Sonnack and Roger Lacey from 3M, John Wright

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x Acknowledgements

from IFF, Dave Richards from Nortel Networks, John Martin from Verizon,
Ben Hyde from the Apache Foundation, Brian Behlendorf from the Apache
Foundation and CollabNet, and Joan Churchill and Susan Hiestand from
Lead User Concepts. Thank you so much for the huge (and often humbling)
insights that your and our field experimentation has provided!
I am also eager to acknowledge and thank my family for the joy and
learning they experience and share with me. My wife Jessie is a professional
editor and edited my first book in a wonderful way. For this book, however,
time devoted to bringing up the children made a renewed editorial collab-
oration impossible. I hope the reader will not suffer unduly as a conse-
quence! My children Christiana Dagmar and Eric James have watched me
work on the book—indeed they could not avoid it as I often write at home.
I hope they have been drawing the lesson that academic research can be
really fun. Certainly, that is the lesson I drew from my father, Arthur von
Hippel. He wrote his books in his study upstairs when I was a child and
would often come down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. In transit, he
would throw up his hands and say, to no one in particular, “Why do I
choose to work on such difficult problems?” And then he would look
deeply happy. Dad, I noticed the smile!
Finally my warmest thanks to my MIT colleagues and students and also
to MIT as an institution. MIT is a really inspiring place to work and learn
from others. We all understand the requirements for good research and
learning, and we all strive to contribute to a very supportive academic envi-
ronment. And, of course, new people are always showing up with new and
interesting ideas, so fun and learning are always being renewed!

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Democratizing Innovation

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