Citizen Innovation: Exploring the Responsibility Governance and Cooperative Mode of a “Post-Schumpeter” Paradigm

It has become a burgeoning trend for the innovation paradigm to shift from producer-dominant to non-producer centric. Based on a critical review of the non-producer innovation literature, we identified several limitations of existing non-producer innovation paradigms—grassroots innovation, free innovation, common innovation, and social innovation—along two critical dimensions: responsibility governance of innovation outcomes and effective organizing form for collaborative innovation. To address the theoretical gaps in existing non-producer innovation research, we propose citizen innovation (CI) as a new integrated innovation paradigm to balance these two dimensions by focusing on citizens’ unique role as innovators. In the paper, we discuss CI’s theoretical framework from three aspects: (1) citizen participation in innovation; (2) open collaborative innovation as the organizing form; (3) the process and incentive mechanisms of citizen innovation. We also offer two real-world examples to support the main propositions and mechanisms of CI. To conclude, we reflect on the limitations of the current research and discuss future directions for CI research.