Eric von Hippel

Eric von Hippel was born August 27, 1941 and is an economist and a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, specializing in the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He is best known for his work developing the concept of user innovation – that end-users, rather than manufacturers, are responsible for a large amount of new innovation. In order to describe this phenomenon, he introduced the term lead user in 1986. von Hippel's work has applications in business strategy and free/open source software (FLOSS) and von Hippel is one of the most highly cited social scientists writing on FLOSS.

Eric von Hippel is the son of the material scientist and physicist Arthur Robert von Hippel who was also a professor at MIT. His great uncle is the German ophthalmologist Eugen von Hippel.

The BUGvonHippel is a breakout board module and an example of open-source hardware. It is named for von Hippel and its enclosure bears his name in Braille.

Eric von Hippel grew up in suburban Weston, MA with his parents, three brothers, and one sister. In his early years, Eric attended public school within the town, but then moved on to the Cambridge School of Weston – a private progressive school - for 8th grade, as well as his latter years. Even as a young child, outside of the classroom, one of Eric’s favorite past times was to try to create and invent new things. Much of his inspiration came from his father, Arthur Robert von Hippel who was also a professor at MIT.

For his undergraduate degree, Eric von Hippel attended Harvard College. In an interview with Eric, he cited that he chose Harvard over MIT for the opportunity to pursue Liberal Arts, as he majored in Economics. His decision to focus in Economics stemmed from his trials in Biology and History, and finding that neither was particularly the right fit for him. After pursuing several inventions post undergraduate, Eric returned to school for his Masters in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. From there, he went on to start his own company, worked at management consultant McKinsey and Co., and eventually studied at Carnegie Mellon University for his Ph.D. in Innovation.