Customer Integration in Industrial Innovation Projects

The development of product innovations is permanently challenged by the customers' rapidly evolving demand for new products and technologies. New approaches for integrating customers into the product innovation process are required and have been exemplified in a software engineering context by Extreme Programming.

Patricia Sandmeier demonstrates how a transfer of elements from Extreme Programming to the development practice of industrial products can improve customer integration activities and the innovativeness of the resulting new products. Based on an in-depth case study analysis of two industrial firms and two technical service firms she presents a conceptual model for the integration of customer contributions into the product innovation process. Finally, the author proposes a product innovation process based on discrete product development steps as well as a 'customer-centered innovation cell' enabling the development of truly innovative product solutions together with customers.

Auteur
Dr. Patricia Sandmeier promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann am Institut für Technologiemanagement der Universität St. Gallen, Schweiz. Sie ist Vorstandsassistentin bei ABB Schweiz.

Résumé
The fact that customers can be a major source of innovation is well known. Research traditions on user-driven innovation have received a lot of attention since the first - search attempts in the early 80s. With today's trend of opening up the internal inno- tion process, innovation actors are no longer restricted to R&D or cross-functional internal teams but include external partners as well. Open innovation and open R&D models are means to manage the increased technological complexity and customer - mands in the global market place. The roles of customers are no longer restricted to p- sive consumers whose latent requirements need to be identified. Instead they have become an active and important part of the innovation process. Von Hippel's 'Democ- tizing innovation' is today's mantra, but how are we to integrate customers in the in- vation process and how can such a process be managed? Patricia Sandmeier analyzes how companies can establish a continuing transfer of c- tomer knowledge to the innovator. She draws on more than 22 European companies and her analytical framework for the case analysis is based on the rather new approach of Extreme Programming (XP) in the software industry. While this approach and the - derlying agile project management practices have received a high acceptance among software engineers, the concept is less known in the 'hardware world' of new product creation.

Contenu
Customer integration into product innovation: state-of-the-art in research.- Reference framework development based on Extreme Programming.- Customer integration in industrial product innovation practice.- Building theory on customer integration into product innovation.- Managerial implications for integrating customers into industrial product innovation.- Conclusion.