@article{Freshwater:229301,
      recid = {229301},
      author = {Freshwater, David and Wojan, Timothy J.},
      title = {User Entrepreneurship: Defining and Identifying Explicit  Type of Innovation},
      address = {2014-12-08},
      number = {1639-2016-135148},
      series = {Working Papers},
      pages = {20},
      month = {Dec},
      year = {2014},
      abstract = {Innovation is widely recognized as a key driver of  economic growth, but innovation is now mainly measured by  patent statistics and seen as reflecting earlier  investments in formal innovation systems that produce new  products an new technologies. A consequence of this  approach to describing the innovation process is that there  is little role for entrepreneurs and in particular little  chance of innovation taking place in rural regions. Yet  prior to the 20th century most innovation came from  individual entrepreneurs and many innovations originated in  rural regions. In particular one form of innovation -  user-innovation, where individuals or single firms when  confronted with a significant problem that has no  acceptable existing solution create their own innovation,  is particularly relevant to rural regions. While most rural  innovations serve local or niche markets there are examples  of major rural innovations that have had disruptive  national or global impacts. Preliminary results from the  new USDA Rural Establishment Innovation Survey confirm that  user innovation is an important aspect of many rural  entrepreneurs and an important aspect of firm  competiveness.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/229301},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.229301},
}