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Eric von Hippel discusses in Democratizing Innovation the developing trend for consumers and competitive firms to innovate on their own instead of leaving it to the "out-of-the-box" and "unorthodox" thinkers. 

"von Hippel shows that, in fields ranging from surgical instruments and software to kite surfing, customers often come up with new products of new ways of using old ones. Some companies encourage their customers to modify their merchandise. Others, however, do not: when a devoted user of Aibo, Sony's robot dog, wrote applicatons that would allow the Aibo to dance to music, Sony threatened the man with a lawsuit."
— James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds