Professor Hippel's research discovers and explores patterns in the sources of innovation and develops new processes to improve the “fuzzy front end” of the innovation process—the end where ideas for breakthrough new products and services are developed. In his most recent book, Democratizing Innovation (MIT Press, April 2005), von Hippel shows how communities of users are actually becoming such powerful innovation engines that they are increasingly driving manufacturers out of product development altogether—a pattern he documents in fields ranging from open source software to sporting equipment. This discovery has been used for a better understanding of the innovation process and for the development of new innovation processes for industry. He is currently leading a major research project to discover how these user innovation communities work, and how and whether the same principles might extend to many areas of product and service development. In addition, von Hippel is working with governmental and academic colleagues in the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom to develop new and modified governmental policies appropriate to the newly emerging innovation paradigm of user-centered innovation.

Erdin Beshimov is a Lecturer at MIT and a Senior Director, Experiential Learning at MIT Open Learning. At MIT Erdin was also the Founder of MIT Bootcamps and founding Director of the MITx MicroMasters Program, which pioneered the model of “inverted admissions,” and the Incubation Group in the Office of Digital Learning. He co-created MIT’s first massive open online courses on entrepreneurship, which have enrolled hundreds of thousands of learners from every country in the world. Guided by the philosophy that MIT is not just a university but a global innovation community, Erdin’s focus at MIT is on building new pathways for learners worldwide to study innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship.

Erdin is a graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management. For his work in entrepreneurship and contributions to student life at MIT, Erdin was awarded the Patrick J. McGovern Entrepreneurship Award, the Carol and Howard Anderson Fellowship, and the MIT Sloan Peer Recognition Award. Before returning to MIT after graduating, Erdin served as Principal at Flagship Pioneering where he focused on ventures in water, energy, and materials. Erdin also co-founded Ubiquitous Energy, a solar technologies spinout from MIT, and evaluated energy efficiency innovations at Venrock Associates.