Opening your product: impact of user innovations and their distribution platform on video game success
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RESEARCH PAPER
Opening your product: impact of user innovations and their distribution platform on video game success Stefan Koch 1 & Michael Bierbamer 2
Received: 21 January 2016 / Accepted: 12 July 2016 / Published online: 29 July 2016 # Institute of Applied Informatics at University of Leipzig 2016
Abstract The focus of this paper is the impact of user innovations on the success of video games. Through the use of secondary data sources, a dataset of 204 video games and their expert and user ratings, user innovation and distribution platform support, as well as the number of available user innovations, is constructed and analyzed. The results highlighted in particular the impact of supporting the main distribution platform for modifications, the Steam Workshop. Hypotheses related to the support of user innovations alone were not supported, but platform support did show a significant positive effect on both number of available user innovations as well as user ratings. The number of user innovations itself did not have an impact on the user ratings. Keywords User innovation . Video game industry . Lead users . Toolkits JEL Classification M19 . M30 . O3
Introduction For several years, research into the field user innovation has been ongoing, focusing on situations in which user innovators who expect to benefit from using a product or a service rather Responsible Editor: Marianna Sigala * Michael Bierbamer [email protected] 1
Department of Management, Bogazici University, 34342 Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey
2
WU – Vienna University of Economics and Business, A-1020 Vienna, Austria
than selling it, create or modify products (von Hippel 2005; West and Bogers 2014; West et al. 2014). The innovations developed by especially so-called lead users, who face needs that will become common in a marketplace months or years ahead (von Hippel 1986; Urban and von Hippel 1988), are also often perceived as more interesting and novel by regular users (von Hippel 1986; Urban and von Hippel 1988; Schreier et al. 2007). Examples range from open source software to watch designs, or the invention of the Web browser. Cooperations with such user innovators became a viable strategy for companies in the context of open innovation, defined by Chesbrough (2003) as the Buse of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand the market for external use of innovation^ (p. xxiv). Companies which follow the principle of open innovation pay more attention to innovations that take place outside the environment of the own company. They follow business models which try to use internal and external ideas and innovations to gain profit, and information and products from users as sources for their own internal innovation process (Bogers and West 2012). Often these companies also initiate collaborations with (potential) users of their products and other profit seeking firms (Ceccagnoli et al. 2012) or individuals to extend their product range or offer an increased range of complementary products. To these ends,
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