How a user innovation origin affects firms’ subsequent innovation performance: the case of Japan’s fishing tackle industry

In user innovation theory, a user-founded firm is based on a product that was originally developed by a user for the user’s private need. In this study, we refer to the start-up characteristic of user-founded firms as the firms’ user innovation origin. We developed hypotheses to shed some initial light on the question of how a user innovation origin affects a firm’s subsequent innovation. Using survey data and expert ratings of 62 small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in the fishing tackle industry, we found several interesting relationships. First, a firm’s user innovation origin strengthens the current owner–manager’s intention to use the class of products produced by the firm and its competitors. This motivation in turn predicts the owner–manager’s product usage behaviour, which directly increases the firm’s frequency of introducing new products. We provide theoretical explanations for this serial multiple mediator model and also discuss their implications and limitations.