Christoph Ihl

A Typology of Customer Co-Creation in the Innovation Process

Customer co-creation denotes an active, creative and social collaboration process between producers (retailers) and customers (users), facilitated by the company. Customers become active participants in an open innovation process of a firm and take part in the development of new products or services. In this paper, we provide a review of the evolution of customer co-creation and related forms of customer participation and suggest a typology of recent methods of co-creation (open innovation with customers). Our typology is based on three dimensions, addressing (i) the customers’ autonomy in the process, (ii) the nature of the firm-customer collaboration (dyadic versus community based), and (iii) the stage of the innovation process when the customer integration takes place. Along these dimensions, we then present specific methods of customer co-creation. We conclude with a number of suggestions for further research.

Organizing for Open Innovation: Aligning Internal Structure with External Knowledge Search

In the past decade, research on open innovation has brought renewed attention to ways how firms can gain from the interaction with external sources of knowledge and innovation. Complementary internal management practices, however, that explain why some firms benefit from open innovation more than others are still largely unexplored. This study adopts the notion of open innovation as external knowledge search and investigates its mutual interdependence with internal organizational structures of a firm’s innovation function. Drawing upon behavioral theories about organizational search and information processing, we hypothesize how structural dimensions such as specialization, formalization and decentralization affect gains from open innovation. Based on a sample of German manufacturing firms, we find higher performance gains from open innovation by aligning internal organizational structures in terms of lower specialization as well as higher formalization and decentralization. These organizational contingencies of open innovation are further emphasized in light of firms’ internal R&D intensity: (1) Low specialization is especially beneficial for firms that try to align open innovation in a complementary fashion with their high internal R&D intensity. (2) Higher formalization and decentralization is essential for firms that try to substitute their low internal R&D intensity by the means of open innovation.

Strategic Capabilities of Mass Customization Based E-Commerce: Construct Development and Empirical Test

Mass customization (MC), i.e. offering customers exactly what they want without losing in operational efficiency, has been positioned as a viable business strategy in ecommerce for many years. Still, many companies have failed in implementing profitable MC. We explain these failures by the lack of strategic capabilities in these firms and examine their effect on firm performance, drawing on a survey of 115 firms offering customized consumer goods on the internet. We build on complementarity theory and examine how multiple core elements of a MC strategy enhance company performance. We find that successful MC is based on the integration of various different organizational elements. Methodologically, we develop a set of valid and reliable instruments to measure three sub-dimensions of MC capability. We give advice to managers how firms pursuing MC can build all three capabilities complementarily to attain strategic differentiation and competitive advantage.

Embedded Toolkits: Identifying Changing User Needs During Product Usage

Abstract: A main challenge in new product development (NPD) is to match a new design to customer preferences. Recent reviews show large failure rates in the commercialization of new designs. In most of the cases, the reason of failure has not been a lack of technological capability of the firm, but an incorrect understanding of real customer needs and demands. This article proposes a potential solution for this issue—the concept of embedded open toolkits for user innovation. The concept of embedded open toolkits for user innovation plans for manufacturers to design products with build-in flexibility, so that customers can make changes to the product, even after purchase. This is done by embedding knowledge and rules about possible product differentiations into the product. The main objective of this article is to study the feasibility of the concept of embedded open toolkits. For this purpose an empirical study among 162 potential users of such a toolkit in the automotive domain was conducted.

All for the Money? The Ambiguity of Monetary Rewards in Firm-Initiated Ideation with Users

In firm-initiated ideation with users, the hosting organization typically dominates the commercial exploitation of users’ revealed ideas. In light of this asymmetric exploitation, offering monetary prizes for the best performing participants or the most valued ideas seems to be a reasonable form of compensation and incentivation. However, we question the sole effectiveness of monetary rewards in the context of a contest and propose two boundary conditions where non-monetary benefits proposed in the private-collective model of user innovation better explains participation: (1) If users’ personal involvement and need in the innovation domain is high, an expectation of monetary rewards is deemed less important, because users expect to better internalize collective innovation outcomes and capture private benefits (non-monetary “compensation effect�?). (2) If users are supposed to allocate effort to collectively oriented activities like commenting, improving or evaluating other users’ ideas, the expectation of monetary rewards is less effective, because it induces rivalry among users (“competition effect�?). We find support for these hypotheses in an empirical study where user participation in a real ideation project is regressed on survey-based measures of motivating conditions that users perceived prior to the contest. We can conclude that monetary rewards can even have detrimental effects in firm-initiated ideation, if the two proposed boundary conditions are taken together.

Making Open Innovation Stick: A Study of Open Innovation Implementation in 756 Global Organizations: A large study of international companies shows that distinct routines and organizational structures differentiate organizations that succeed with open innovation.

Overview: Open innovation is an established approach to improve innovation performance, but many organizations have failed to embed open innovation in their innovation processes permanently and at scale. Building on an investigation of 756 international organizations, we show that the existence of distinct routines and organizational structures can explain why some firms implement open innovation successfully. We present a guideline for managers to master the organizational journey from closed to open innovation, moving their company from an initial state via pilots and exploration toward a permanently open state.

Inflation and Self-correction in Entrepreneurship Science

We studied the conflict between two mechanisms influencing impact of scientific articles using an extensive dataset derived by methodological innovations of proven methods. This study covers contri...