Research has shown that many innovations originate not in the manufacturer but the user domain. Internet-based Toolkits for Idea Competitions (TIC) are a novel way for manufacturers to access innovative ideas and solutions from users. Idea competitions build on the nature of competition as a means to encourage users to participate at an open innovation process, to inspire their creativity, and to increase the quality of the submissions. When the contest ends, submissions are evaluated by an expert panel. Users whose submissions score highest receive an award from the manufacturer, which is often granted in exchange for the right to exploit the solution in its domain. Following the idea of evolutionary prototyping, we developed a TIC in cooperation with a manufacturer of sports goods. The TIC was launched as a pilot in one of the company's markets. Submissions were evaluated using the consensual assessment technique. The evaluation of this study provides suggestions for further research, but also implications for managers willing to explore TIC in their organization.
Forecasting the demand for new products is becoming increasingly difficult in many markets. But collective customer commitment, a new method to decrease the flop rate of new products, offers a solution by integrating customers deeply in the innovation process. The collective customer commitment method exploits the commitment of users to screen, evaluate and score new designs as a powerful mechanism to reduce flops of new products. The process starts when an idea for a product is posted on a dedicated web site by either a (potential) customer or the developers of a manufacturer. Second, reactions and evaluations of other consumers towards the posted idea are encouraged in form of internet forums and opinion polls. Based on the results of this process, the manufacturer investigates the possibility of commercialization of the most popular designs. Is this evaluation positive, the company decides about a minimum amount of purchasers necessary to produce the item for a given sales price, covering its initial development and manufacturing costs (and the desired margin). The new product idea is then presented to the customer community, and interested customers are invited to express their commitment to this idea by voting for the design or even placing an order. Accordingly, only if the number of interested purchasers exceeds the minimum necessary lot size, investments in final product development are made, merchandising is settled and sales are commenced.
The objective of this paper is to explore new modes of cooperation among users, retailers and manufacturers resulting from co-design – a customer-centric business strategy. Co-design activities are performed at dedicated interfaces and allow for the joint development of products and solutions between individual users and manufacturers. Our research on co-design is based on a deep interaction with case companies, making the research itself a further collaborative effort. In this paper, we first explore collaboration challenges with a case company introducing customer co-design (Adidas AG, a sport goods manufacturer). In a second step of exploration, we use findings from a larger database of case studies on user co-design or mass customization to identify four basic modes of cooperation between customers, retailers and manufacturers. In a final step, the understanding gained from this differentiation is refined using the Adidas case. From the perspective of management practice, our research contributes to a better understanding of the collaboration challenges following a customer-centric business strategy. From the perspective of management research, the paper provides both a conceptual model of cooperation demands at the user interface and a methodological framework for collaborative management research between academics and companies.
The paper focues on the role of the user within a user co-design process. Users face new uncertainties and risks, coined “mass confusion”, when acting as co-designers. Building on a construction strategy of empirical management research in the form of six case studies, we propose the use of online communities for collaborative customer co-design in order to reduce the mass confusion phenomenon. In doing so, the paper challenges the assumption made by many researchers that offering customized products requires an individual (one-to-one) relationship between customer and supplier. The objective of the paper is to build and explore the idea of communities for customer co-design and transfer established knowledge on community support to this new area of application.
The primary argument in favor of mass customization is the delivery of superior customer value. Using willingness-to-pay (WTP) measurements, Franke & Piller (2004) have recently
shown that customers designing their own watches with design toolkits are willing to pay premiums of more than 100% (Delta-WTP). In the course of three experiments, we found that this type of value increment is not a singular occurrence but might rather be a general phenomenon, as we again found average Delta-WTPs of more than 100% for customers designing their own cell phone covers, T-shirts, and scarves. Building on this, we discuss the sources of
benefits that are likely to explain this tremendous value increment. It is argued that compared to conventional standard products, a mass-customized product might render the following utilitarian and hedonic benefits: (1) First, the output might be beneficial as self-designed products offer a much closer fit between individual needs and product cha racteristics. In addition to this mere functional benefit, extra value might also stem from (2) the perceived uniqueness of the self-designed product. Designing one's own products might, however, also more generally change the way in which people consume products. As the customer takes on the role of an active co-designer, there may also be two general do- it-yourself effects: (3)
First, the process of designing per se is likely to allow the customer to meet hedonic or experiential needs (process benefit). (4) As the customers themselves are the designers, they will also be likely to value the output more highly, as they will be proud of having created
something on their own (instead of traditionally buying something created by somebody else)– which might be referred to as the 'pride-of-authorship' effect.
Recently, toolkits for user innovation and design have been proposed as a promising means of opening up the innovation process to customers. Using these tools, customers can take on problem-solving tasks and design products to fit their individual needs. To date, arguments in favor of this new concept have been limited to the idea of "satisfying each user's needs" in a highly efficient and valuable way.
The aim of this empirical study is to extend our knowledge of how users deal with "the invitation to innovate" and how attractive individual user designs might be to other users. In studying the users of toolkits for the immensely popular computer game The Sims, we found that (1) users are not "one-time shoppers" – in fact, their innovative engagement is rather long-lasting, continuous, evolving, and intense – and that (2) leading-edge users do not merely content themselves with the official toolkits provided by the manufacturer. They employ user-created tools to push design possibilities even further. Moreover, (3) individual user designs are not only attractive to the creators themselves; instead, certain innovative solutions are in high demand among other users.
Based on our findings, we discuss how toolkits and their users might add to the process of innovation in general. We argue that toolkits could serve as a promising market research tool for guiding a firm's new product development efforts. Furthermore, toolkits may serve as a crèche for interested but inexperienced users who could evolve into leading-edge users over time. These innovative users might then be integrated into more radical product development efforts.
Firms and governments are increasingly interested in learning to exploit the value of lead user innovations for commercial advantage. Improvements to lead user theory are needed to inform and guide these efforts. In this paper we empirically test and confirm the basic tenants of lead user theory. We also discover some new refinements and related practical applications.
Using a sample of users and user-innovators drawn from the extreme sport of kite surfing, we analyze the relationship between the commercial attractiveness of innovations developed by users and the intensity of the lead user characteristics those users display. We provide a first empirical analysis of the independent effects of its two key component variables. In our empirical study of user modifications to kite surfing equipment, we find that both components independently contribute to identifying commercially attractive user innovations. Component 1 (the “high expected benefits” dimension) predicts innovation likelihood, and component 2 (the “ahead of the trend” dimension) predicts both the commercial attractiveness of a given set of user-developed innovations and innovation likelihood due to a newly-proposed innovation supply side effect. We conclude that the component variables in the lead user definition are indeed independent dimensions and so neither can be dropped without loss of information - an important matter for lead user theory. We also find that adding measures of users’ local resources can improve the ability of the lead user construct to identify commercially-attractive innovations under some conditions.
The findings we report have practical as well as theoretical import. Product modification and development has been found to be a relatively common user behavior in many fields. Thus, from 10% to nearly 40% of users report having modified or developed a product for in-house use (in the case of industrial products) or for personal use (in the case of consumer products) in fields sampled to date. As a practical matter, therefore, it is important to find ways to selectively identify the user innovations that manufacturers will find to be the basis for commercially attractive in the collectivity of user-developed innovations. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and also for practical applications of the lead user construct, i.e. how variables used in lead user studies can profitably be adapted to fit specific study contexts and purposes.
This article investigates the joint-development of innovations within online consumer groups. While research on user-innovations within communities can often be found for open source software and emerging extreme sports like kite-surfing or rodeo kayaking, our study focuses on innovation activities within online consumer communities for basketball shoes, a physical consumer product in a mature market. Our research shows, that a small number of consumers are highly creative, possess sufficient domain specific skills and motivation to develop new innovative basketball shoes. While many community members state their experiences and problems with existing shoe models, those actively participating in joint-innovation activities are rather driven by excitement than by pure need for product improvement. The high quality and variety of innovations and general willingness of community members to share their ideas with producers, leads us to the discussion how creative communities can be virtually integrated into a company’s innovation process.
The “community-based” model has generated many of the innovations we use on a daily basis. The social structure created by this model has cultivated many entrepreneurial ventures and even seeded new industries and product categories. In this paper, I discuss three elements of this model and present four exemplars of the model that span fields and centuries. I conclude by reframing our view of the innovation process as driven by the activities of firms and research institutions and discussing implications for firms and policy.
This research explores the grassroots brand community centered on the Apple Newton, a product that was abandoned by the marketer. Supernatural, religious, and magical motifs are common in the narratives of the Newton community, including the miraculous performance and survival of the brand, as well as the return of the brand creator. These motifs invest the brand with powerful meanings and
perpetuate the brand and the community, its values, and its beliefs. These motifs also reflect and facilitate the many transformative and emancipatory aspects of consuming this brand. Our findings reveal important properties of brand communities and, at a deeper level, speak to the communal nature of religion and the enduring human need for religious affiliation.
The main objective of this article is to report the empirical findings from a study on user involvement in service innovation. In doing this, we seek to answer the question of how user involvement affects the originality of new service ideas. An experimental investigation was carried out which included 54 participants arranged into three groups of creative users, ordinary users and professional service developers. The empirical data revealed that the users produced more original ideas than the company’s professional service developers. It is thus suggested that business organizations attempt to innovate original products would benefit from involving their customers.
User involvement in the development of new products may offer a novel approach to improved methods of meeting customer needs. These users are considered to offer possibilities for generating original, valuable, and realizable ideas leading to successful innovation. However, the merit of users’ ideas compared to ideas generated by the company itself has not been investigated empirically. In the present study, advanced users, ordinary users, and professional product developers were given the task of creating ideas for future mobile phone services. The main purpose was to examine the benefit of involving users in suggesting new product ideas in an innovation project. An experimental three-group design was used in order to assess the output in terms of its original, valuable, and realizable merit. The results indicated that ordinary users create significantly more original and valuable ideas than professional developers and advanced users. Professional developers and advanced users created more easily realizable ideas, and ordinary users created the most valuable ideas. The results were discussed from the viewpoint of divergent thinking. It was suggested that divergent thinking was facilitated through the opportunity to combine different information elements that appeared separate at the outset, such as personal needs coupled with the functionality of mobile phone services.
This study analyzes the value created by so-called "toolkits for user innovation and design", a new method of integrating customers into new product development and design. Toolkits allow customers to create their own product, which in turn is produced by the manufacturer. In our study, we asked (1) if customers actually make use of the solution space offered by toolkits, and if so, (2) how much value the self-design actually creates.
In our study, we used a relatively simple, design-focused toolkit for a set of four experiments with a total of 717 participants, 267 of whom actually created their own watches. The heterogeneity of the resulting design solutions was calculated using the entropy concept, and willingness to pay was measured by the contingent valuation method and Vickrey auctions.
Entropy coefficients showed that self-designed watches vary quite widely. On the other hand, significant patterns are still visible despite this high level of entropy, meaning that customer preferences are highly heterogeneous and diverse in style but not completely random.
We also found that consumers are willing to pay a considerable price premium. Their willingness to pay (WTP) for a self-designed watch exceeds the WTP for standard watches by far, even for the best-selling standard watches of the same technical quality. On average, we found a 100% value increment for watches designed by users with the help of the toolkit.
Taken together, these findings suggest that the toolkit's ability to allow customers to customize products to suit their individual preferences creates value for them in a B2C setting even when only a simple toolkit is employed. Alternative explanations, implications and necessary future research are discussed.
In the development of past infrastructures, cooperative and amateur action has been a vehicle for diffusion, experimentation, innovation, popularization, and the provision of new features or services. 802.11 ("Wi-Fi") cooperatives are now proliferating. This user study considers three cases of cooperative action in the discovery, development, and provision of 802.11 (Wi-Fi) networks: (1) mapping and "Warchalking," (2) open-source portal software, and (3) the provision of service as an alternative to paying for a commercial subscription. It finds that these co-ops exist primarily to build elite expertise, but that it may be possible to direct these skillful groups toward societal goals.
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