Customer Integration into the Fuzzy Front End of Smart Innovations

The habilitation project is based on the open innovation paradigm, which studies the active strategic use of sources outside a company`s premises as contributors to a company`s innovative power. Progress in ICT-technologies, increasing global interconnectedness and cost reductions for virtual solutions have led to new ways of integrating external sources into the innovation process via web-based crowd-sourcing initiatives and other open innovation tools. In traditional market research, consumers are usually understood as suppliers of needs information through one-way communication channels. In the open innovation approach, consumers are integrated in interactive, two- way information channels as co-developers who provide not only needs information, but solution information as well. For example, users may contribute a high number of new product ideas or possible technical solutions for new product development through web-based competitions. Yet, the quality of such contributions from different external sources can vary severely. Some opponents criticize that such contributions may entail a lot of screening work that drives resources away from internal R&D while it does not really lead to substantial input for truly new and radical innovations. In the same vein, integrating customers into radical innovation projects is understood as risky because typical consumers may be unable to anticipate or evaluate future product usage beyond their immediate usage experience. Consumers then develop disdain for radical solutions, because they fail to understand them. If project progress is based on such customer evaluations, possibly promising radical innovations might be aborted. To tackle this challenge, companies might either integrate only individuals, who possess such anticipative capabilities (e.g. lead-users), or empower average consumers to make more sophisticated evaluations (e.g. via visualization techniques). This habilitation project focuses on these two approaches. Several multi-part experiments shall be carried out to explore and test 1) whether respondents are in a better position to generate or evaluate radical new product solutions when they are immersed into possible future usage scenarios via multimedia visualization tools 2) and which competences and skills respondents require to contribute a high quantity and quality of information for radical innovation projects. As a result of the empirical studies, practical recommendations for integrating external sources into the innovation process can be provided. The theoretical implications of the results shall be discussed along with possible implications for capabilities and responsibilities of marketing and innovation managers resulting from the active role of consumers within the open innovation approach.

No additional funding sources recorded.