Is There a Doctor in the House? Expert Product Users, Organizational Roles, and Innovation

We explore the impact on innovation that domain experts, i.e., professional end users of a product have as inventors, executives, and board members in a young organization. Using a dataset of 231 surgical instrument ventures spanning a 25-year period alongside in-depth qualitative fieldwork, we find that professional physician–users (surgeons) strengthen innovation in some roles but block it in others. These experts are related to an increase in...