Democratizing Innovation

This looks like an interesting book on the change from mass manufactured consumer goods to much more customised consumption possibilities - leading to people creating their own innovations, ie: self actualising rather than being sheep!

The book is free online in pdf format at the link above.

Start of Chapter 1 :
"When I say that innovation is being democratized, I mean that users of products and services—both firms and individual consumers—are increasingly able to innovate for themselves. User-centered innovation processes offer great advantages over the manufacturer-centric innovation development systems that have been the mainstay of commerce for hundreds of years. Users that innovate can develop exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents. Moreover, individual users do not have to develop everything they need on their own: they can benefit from innovations developed and freely shared by others. The trend toward democratization of innovation applies to information products such as software and also to physical products."