Integrating customers in product innovation : Lessons from industrial development contractors and in-house contractors in rapidly changing customer markets
Journal
Creativity and Innovation Management
ISSN
0963-1690
ISSN-Digital
1467-8691
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2010-06-01
Author(s)
Abstract
Successful product innovation has increasingly been recognized as an outcome of integrating customers into the new product development (NPD) process. In this paper, we explore customer integration by investigating the continual consideration of customer contributions throughout the product innovation process. Trough a comparison of the customer integration practices by development contractors with those of in-house developers, we find that the iterative and adaptive innovation process structures of the development contractors facilitate the realization of the full customer contribution potential throughout the product innovation process. We also find additional support for the incorporation of open innovation into an organization's NPD activities. Our findings are based on in-depth case studies of the NPD activities of in-house developers and product development contractors.
Language
English
Keywords
product innovation
new product development (NPD) process
development contractors
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell
Publisher place
Oxford
Volume
19
Number
2
Start page
89
End page
106
Pages
18
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
62774
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
10 CIM Customers PI.pdf
Size
131.58 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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