Managers aiming at utilizing the potential of involving ordinary users in ideation for innovation have at the present very little guidance from the existing literature regarding how to do this in an adequate way. This paper aims filling this knowledge gap by contributing to a better understanding of how users contribute to, and how they could adequately be managed in the ideation process of technology-based services. This is accomplished by identifying and investigating different ideation patterns and their effects on the created ideas’ characteriztics, in the context of mobile telephony services. The paper is based on a quasi-experimental study lasting over twelve days involving 56 ordinary users and 12 professionals as idea creators. Three different groups of users and one reference group of professionals were used. The paper inductively identifies four different ideation patterns that lead to different types of ideas in regard to their innovativeness (incremental/radical). These are further related to the existing literature. The paper concludes with managerial implications regarding how to manage this type of user involvement in order to obtain either more incremental or more radical ideas.