From User Experience to User Innovation: Patterns of Innovations Behaviour of Population in Russia

Contemporary economic agenda discussed worldwide by many policy makers, strategy business managers and scientists relates to people's behavior. As well as the overall shift in economic theory from traditional model to neoclassical where consumers and their preferences play the most important role the linear model of innovation has been changed towards so called ‘free innovation’ paradigm characterized by active user engagement in innovation development. Individuals have become the main actors both as creators and end-users. According to Eric von Hippel, known as one of the fathers of the User Innovation Studies, innovation starts from a problem one needs to solve. In the end a variety of products, services or technologies created by users appear to supply demand for new solutions. Among the examples there are the Braille System created in order to allow blind students to read, or Dropbox developed to provide remote access to your documents, photos or files from everywhere anytime, or online education courses such as Coursera or Khan Academy giving everyone a chance to get new knowledge and skills distantly, etc. And innovation policies towards user innovation drives economic growth from all sides: democratization of innovation and opening innovation processes, increasing public engagement in innovative activity or public adoption of technologies and innovations. The paper is aimed at understanding patterns of innovative behavior of population in order to elicit and explain factors that stimulate Russian users to innovate. The research question particularly addresses the influence of social and demographic characteristics as well as personal experience of Russian users on their engagement with innovation activity, i.e. are innovative-users driven by socio-economic needs or by latent factors that define their lifestyle and social and economic set-ups? To answer this question master thesis deals with the literature in user innovation studies, behavioral economics and phycology. An original conceptual model and its approbation on data taken from the Russian Longitudal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) in 2016 and 2019 are provided. The waves of the survey represent specific socio-demographic and psychological set-ups of individuals that reflect their daily practices in connection with innovative activity. The research may bring promising contribution to the microeconomics of innovations, challenging user innovation definitions and existing results on large-scale datasets as well as support to the innovation policies and business strategies.