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.
As the classical corporate boundaries are beginning to blur internally as well as externally traditional value chains loose their chain attributes, and are replaced by a web of fluid and flexible relations -the value web. This paper will extend the common view of value webs by defining customers as an important part of value creation. Customer integration into innovation processes taking place within a value web (a process that will be coined "webbed customer innovation" in this paper) is discussed as a beneficial method to overcome some of the flaws and challenges of new product and technology development. The role of the customer is changing from a pure consumer of products or services to a coequal partner in a process of adding value -consumers are becoming coproducers and co-designers. We offer in this paper a framework for webbed customer innovation tools by introducing the concept of the customer-integrationcube (CIC). The CIC renders a systematisation of webbed customer innovation tools on the basis of specific dimensions, which were identified as most important, and serves as an originator to reveal possible lacks of webbed customer innovation attempts.
"We don't have a waste problem, we have a design problem", say Michael Braungart and William McDonough, the principle architects of the cradle-to-cradle concept (Braungart & McDonough, 2010). Our current economic paradigm is based on goods being produced, which are used briefly and finally gotten rid of by the consumers. Such a system is so conventional, that we actually stop noticing it (Kortmann & Piller, 2016) and continue teaching it in the business schools and design schools the world over. In November 2015 the department of Design and Product Management (DPM) at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences hosted an international conference on "Circular Design". Indeed, at DPM much design research is dedicated to circular product design and due to the very nature of the department-teaching skill sets for the entire breadth of the design process-we feel that we have much to offer in the form of advice.
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