User innovation is a core element of a commons friendly alternative to innovation. It can create tight feedback loops. In software development philosophy, the idea evolved into the pattern to Release Early - Release Often wiki 
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"Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers".html
# Features - information is disclosed to many user's -> quicker feedback can be expected and facilitates improvements - no cost of preserving secrecy - low cost R&D - low expenses for diffusing an innovation - enhanced reputation of a project or company
# Challenges - in the context of dominant business models there are opportunity costs for not adopting a proprietarian approach
# See also
User Innovation Collective Invention Distributed Production and Community Support Linus's Law
# Sources
Janet Elizabeth Hope (2004): (2008): Biobazaar. The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology,pdf , see especially chapter 6, page 143-205
Raymond, Eric (1997-05-27). Release Early, Release Often. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. ISBN 1-56592-724-9. html
# Additional Notes "free revealing strategies" are also used by company to entice the purchase of core technologies which are proprietarian, because the assumption of conventional innovation theory proved to be wrong that
any uncompensated spillover of proprietary knowledge developed through private investment will reduce the innovator’s profit from that investment. (Hope 2008:151)