Innovations are viewed as being the major factor in agricultural growth and progress. Earlier, generating innovations and disseminating them was mainly limited to researchers but now with the passage of time, innovations are being developed by farmers as well. Farmers as lead users have a rich understanding of local resources as well as situations. They are in a better condition to identify problem and generate solutions. As users, they are developing innovations for solving various practical problems. The lead user faces a number of constraints that prevents the creation and dissemination of innovations even within a small community. The present study was conducted to highlight those major constrains faced by lead users. Uttar Pradesh was selected as locale. Based on the maximum number of lead users present, 13 districts were selected purposively from the state Uttar Pradesh. A total of 30 lead users were selected for rank analysis. Lead users were asked to rank their responses on various major heads and sub-heads. Out of different constraints economic constraints (7.16) were ranked first followed by technical (6.46), marketing (6.33), organizational (5.13) and infrastructural constraints (4.46). It was observed that farmers were keen to innovate but due to different constraints and lack of proper support system many of the innovations were at the initial stage and not commercialized. According to the results of the study, collaboration between centralized and decentralized innovation generation systems is necessary to obtain both the needed scientific validation from scientists and need-based solutions from the lead users.

Keyword: Lead Users; Farmers’; Innovations; Constraints.