Now showing 1 - 10 of 11
  • Publication
    IT-enabled Product Innovation: Customer Motivation for Participating in Virtual Idea Communities
    (Inderscience Enterprises, 2015)
    Bretschneider, Ulrich
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    Mathiassen, Lars
    Virtual idea communities (VICs) such as Dell's 'Ideastorm' are very popular in practice. In VICs, customers of firms can submit ideas to support product innovation. This customer-based ideation is not new. Customers have been brought together in lead-user-workshops or focus-groups since the 1980s to support product innovation. However, VICs represents a new form of IT-mediated ideation with customers. While extant research has provided insights into customers' motives for participating in traditional ideation, we know little about the motivations that drive customer participation in this new form of IT-enabled ideation. Based on a survey of customer motivations for participation, we found evidence for motives that arise directly due to the VIC's IT-ability to support visualisation of customer ideas, to give feedback on ideas, and to support customers' social interactions. As a result, VICs are perceived as a way to demonstrate personal capabilities, for getting recognition, and for facilitating social interaction.
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    Scopus© Citations 26
  • Publication
    Applying an Open Innovation Method for identifying Challenges in the Cloud Business Environment
    (Conlife, 2013-06-29) ;
    Gebauer, L.
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    Ebel, P.
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    The success of connected life services is strongly related to the success of cloud computing. These enormous data volumes can only be handled economically with cloud-based services. Therefore, cloud computing can be seen as a basic technology for successful connected life services. However, the actual use of cloud-based solutions within the B2B sector is due to existing uncertainties by the customers still limited. Therefore, the research question of the study is: Which challenges do cloud users have and how can these challenges be overcome? To answer this question a workshop was designed applying the lead user method as part of the open Innovation approach to identify challenges of the daily work life and to develop user centered and innovative cloud-based product/ service concepts. A total of 10 lead users have participated in the workshop. All participants are customers of a German small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME), which offers a number of cloud-based services for the business sector. In a first step the participants identified 42 challenges of their daily work life. In a second step the participants, who were separated into three groups, developed solution concepts to overcome selected challenges. To structure the development of the solution concepts the Business Model Canvas has been used. The workshop results show that the lead user method is appropriate to identify the challenges of the daily work life and to elaborate cloud-based solution concepts therefore. The customer Integration in the product/ service development process is suitable to develop user centered and innovative concepts.
  • Publication
    The case of the Ideenschmiede
    (Agence Prisme, 2012-05-23)
    Hartmann, Marco
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    Bretschneider, Ulrich
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    Online communities are a very interactive place where patients communicate with each other about diseases, therapies, how to deal with diseases and about personal experiences made. They also develop and share innovative ideas, which shall make their all day life easier. But this happens mostly in an unsystematic and uncontrolled manor. To support this ideation process we developed a module called “Ideenschmiede”, which extends existing online patient communities in order to support the collaborative and systematic idea development. For doing so we looked out for an existing online community within the healthcare sector, in which patients already develop ideas. Against this backdrop, this research in progress article addresses the following question: “How can existing online communiti
  • Publication
    Introducing Open Innovation to Universities : How to Increase Universities Innovativeness
    (ISPIM International Society for Professional Innovation Management Ltd, 2012-06-17)
    Kipp, P.
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    Zogaj, S.
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    Ebel, P.
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    Bretschneider, U.
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    In order to react to increasing competition for new students, European universities need to become more attractive and listen to the demands of their students. Open Innovation has proven to be an effective way for the integration of new stakeholders into innovation processes and increase innovativeness. This paper describes the application of a framework for the design of Collective Intelligence task to an Open Innovation context. We will show how the framework supports the conceptual design of an idea generation process for a virtual ideas community platform for a German university. The process will account for the specific environment of public universities and the demands of their students. The paper shows that the framework for Collective Intelligence is also applicable to crowdsourced Open Innovation activities like idea generation.
  • Publication
    The Lead User Method for SME - a Guidebook for Practitioners and Facilitators
    (Chair for Information Systems, Kassel University, 2013)
    Ebel, P.
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    Bretschneider, U.
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    We wrote this handbook in order to support SMEs in applying the lead user concept, which was originally developed by von Hippel (von Hippel 1986). The ability to carry out a lead user workshop can make a significant contribution to raising the innovation capacity of SME's. Several studies in different markets have found that a large amount of users which already generated innovations are lead users, and that prototypes that have been developed by lead users often form the basis for innovative and commercially successful products. Nevertheless, the realisation of the lead user concept (including the preparation of the project, the identification of suitable participants and relevant market trends as well as the execution of the workshop) requires extensive process and methodical competencies (Churchill, Sonnack, & Von Hippel, 2009), and is, therefore, hard to achieve for SME's. Without knowing how a distinct activity (e.g. a brainstorming on possible solutions to the problem at hand, or the reduction of different alternatives) should be executed, the only way to conduct a lead user workshop is to hire an external specialist who is familiar with the lead user concept, and who knows how to execute the according activities correctly. At present, the application of the lead user concept (including the identification of relevant trends as well as lead users) takes approximately 9 months, and costs about $51,000 (Herstatt et. al. 1991).
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