Lead User: Concept and Relevance in Agriculture

Lead users are those that are substantially ahead of market trends and have needs that are significantly greater than those of the typical user. They are primarily responsible for creating user innovations. A lead user recognizes the need, solves the problem by innovating and building prototype and proves its value by using it. Benefits that lead users receive from innovating are twofold. Users innovate because they get benefitted from using the innovation, and also reap monetary benefits as a result of selling a user-created innovation to other users. In agriculture, complexity, high maintenance and installation cost, cultural and social incompatibility of centralized innovations have led to higher discontinuance of innovations. Hence it is important to involve lead users’ innovation in formal system of research and development. Involving lead user in formal system is important but there are various constraints associated with it like technical, organizational, infrastructural, economic and marketing constraints. Apart from this, a lead user is usually evaluated using scientific criteria and is viewed as a passive receiver of knowledge as opposed to an independent creator. Their innovations are not often considered as science, rather they are blamed for following a relaxed approach towards research protocols. Considering these pertinent issues, it is pre-requisite for lead users to institutionalize innovations. Several organizations in India and abroad are engaged in collaborative activities with lead users and integrating their innovations into mainstream research and development. With the founding of SRISTI in 1993, India became the first nation to acknowledge and promote the lead users' capacity for innovation. The four areas of creativity that were highlighted were education, technology, institutions, and culture. Gujarat Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network was founded in 1997, and the National Innovation Foundation was founded in 2000. SRISTI and GIAN's work were intensified by NIF. PROLINNOVA is an international organization that came into existence in 2004 in Ethiopia. It supports the identification, recording, sharing, and promotion of regional innovations. Countries across the globe are putting efforts to collaborate with lead users through different projects and ideas like small scale project, local agricultural research committee, promoting farmer innovation-farmer field school. Lead users get benefit from institutions and organizations in terms of respect and recognition, monetary benefits and patent. Extension professional can play an important role in collaborating with lead users through KVK. They can organize innovative platforms for interaction, facilitate various kinds of information exchange activities as well as orient them towards market trends using market led extension approach.

Akanchha Singh*1 and VLV Kameswari2 Click here to download file

Case Study | Published online : 21-Jun-2024