Overview
Eric von Hippel is a Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management who introduced the concept of "lead users" in his 1986 paper "Lead Users: A Source of Novel Product Concepts" (Management Science, Vol. 32, No. 7). His work on lead user innovation is an intellectual precursor to aspects of Blank's Customer Development, particularly the concept of "earlyvangelists."
Lead User Theory
Lead users are defined by two characteristics: 1. They face needs that will become general in the marketplace, but months or years before the bulk of the market encounters them 2. They are positioned to benefit significantly from obtaining a solution, and therefore may innovate on their own
The Lead User method collects information about needs and solutions from the leading edges of the target market and from "analogue markets" — rather than from users at the center of an established market.
Connection to Customer Development
Blank's concept of "earlyvangelists" in "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" directly corresponds to von Hippel's lead users. Earlyvangelists are customers who:
This matches von Hippel's definition — users who face needs ahead of the market and are motivated enough to innovate. In Customer Discovery (Step 1 of Customer Development), founders seek precisely the type of customer von Hippel described: people already "fiddling about with their own makeshift solutions to the problem."
Significance
Von Hippel's lead user research (1986) predates Customer Development (2003) by 17 years and provides academic grounding for one of Blank's most practical concepts. The connection demonstrates that Customer Discovery's emphasis on finding extreme early adopters — rather than surveying representative market samples — has rigorous theoretical foundations in innovation research.
Sources: von Hippel, Management Science 1986 (MIT); Wikipedia (Lead user, Eric von Hippel)