The Value of Customer Cocreated Knowledge during the Innovation Process

Abstract

Customer cocreation during the innovation process has recently been suggested to be a major source for firms' competitive advantage. Hereby, customers actively engage in a firm's innovation process and take over innovation activities traditionally performed by a firm's employees. Despite its suggested importance, previous research has revealed contradictory findings regarding its impact, the nature of involved customers, and the channels of communication that enable cocreation. To provide a more fine‐grained picture, customer cocreated knowledge is first delineated into its key value dimensions of relevance, novelty, and costs, and then their impact on various innovation outcomes is investigated. Next, the study examines the antecedent role of customer determinants; that is, lead user characteristics and customer–firm closeness, on these knowledge value dimensions. Finally, we explore how these effects are moderated by the type of communication channel used. An empirical validation of the conceptual model is performed by means of survey data from 126 customer cocreation projects. The data analysis indicates that customer cocreation is most successful for the creation of highly relevant but moderately novel knowledge. Cocreation with customers who are closely related to the innovating firm results in more highly relevant knowledge at a low cost. Yet, cocreation with lead users produces novel and relevant knowledge. These effects are contingent on the richness and reach of the communication channels enabling cocreation. Overall, the findings shed light on opportunities and limitations of customer cocreation for innovation and reconcile determinants originating in relationship marketing and innovation management. At the same time, managers obtain recommendations for selecting customers and communication channels to enhance the success of their customer cocreation initiatives.

Knowledge Creation Process and Sustainable Competitive Advantage: the Role of Technological Innovation Capabilities

“…[18,19]. Firms have increasingly co-created knowledge with external stakeholders during the innovation process to expand their knowledge base [20], and interorganizational learning is the key to the accomplishment of knowledge co-creation process [8]. Our goals in this article are to clarify the mechanisms through which firms can establish SCA through KCP, and we adopt the opinion that a firm's SCA is mainly determined by the endogenous force from resources and capabilities [9].…”

The Lag-User Method: Using laggards as a source of innovative ideas

“…Poetz & Schreier (2012) also demonstrate that "user ideas clearly score higher on average in terms of novelty and customer benefit" than ideas developed by engineers or marketers. Lettl, Herstatt and Gemuenden (2006) defend that manufacturers can benefit from the users significantly, for example through consumers' contribution to innovation outcome (Frank, von Hippel and Schreier, 2006;Mahr, Lievens & Blazevic, 2013), their ability to come up with innovative and commercially valid ideas (Ogawa and Piller, 2006;Poetz and Schreier, 2012), to develop greater product variety and product lines (Al-Zu'bi and Tsinopoulos, 2012;Lilien et al, 2002), and finally to contribute to market performance (Baldwin, Hienerth and von Hippel, 2006;Hienerth, 2006;Nishikawa, Schreier and Ogawa, 2013). Thus, consumers are believed to add valuable insights to firm's new product development process (NPD).…”

“…Thus, consumers are believed to add valuable insights to firm's new product development process (NPD). Users' involvement in NPD process can result in more user-acceptable outcomes (Foster & Franz, 1999), reduce NPD costs and their empowerment can create a promising positioning strategy that gives firms competitive advantage in the market place (Fuchs and Schreier, 2011;Mahr, Lievens & Blazevic, 2013) . Higher consumer involvement results in customer satisfaction and loyalty towards the firm (Ind, Eglesias and Shultz, 2013) as well as emotional bounding, trust and commitment (Brodie et al, 2011).…”

Crowdsourcing pour innover : proposition d’un modèle d’adoption, le cas de Raidlight

“…En adoptant une activité de CS, l'entreprise s'ouvre à des ressources et connaissances externes « gigantesques » (Pénin et Burger-Helmchen, 2012). L'entreprise doit donc développer des mécanismes de transfert (Mahr et al, 2014), notamment par le biais de Ils ont tous été intégralement retranscrits. Concernant la R&D collaborative, la foule peut solliciter l'entreprise, qui examine par la suite les idées reçues.…”

“…Toutefois, à l'exception de certains cas emblématiques tels que Connect + Develop de Procter & Gamble ou IdeaStorm de Dell, la littérature propose peu d'études empiriques portant sur les activités de CS pour innover (Pénin et Burger-Helmchen, 2012), alors que ce type d'activités semble poser des problèmes majeurs limitant à la fois son adoption et son intégration comme une activité d'innovation à part entière (Bartl et al, 2012 ;Lobre et Lebraty, 2012 ;Pénin et Burger-Helmchen, 2012 ;Mahr et al, 2014). Or, bien que la littérature souligne l'intérêt d'adopter une activité de CS pour les entreprises (Bartl et al, 2012 ;Piezunka et Dahlander, 2015), il existe à notre connaissance peu de recherches identifiant les facteurs d'influence à l'adoption de ces activités (Di Gangi et Wasko, 2009 ;Thuan et al, 2015), malgré l'enjeu économique qu'elles portent (Zhao et Zhu, 2014).…”