The how and why of consumers' co-creation: evidence from the Fiat 500 case study

In the current business environment firms need to continuously renew their products to keep up with their competitive advantage. Increasingly, customers' needs are atomized and they change at an unprecedented pace. Thus, some companies have started to tap consumer knowledge over the internet. These companies are using the web and social media to build virtual spaces to connect with actual and potential customers in order to engage them at different stages of the new product development process. In such virtual spaces, consumers spontaneously decide to contribute with their knowledge, ideas and activities to company's cocreation initiatives. In marketing research, there is a dearth of studies on how companies are involving ordinary consumers in their innovation processes through internet applications. Moreover, few studies have investigated the implications of cocreation activities on innovation outputs and brand image. Thus, this study has adopted a single case study approach and has explored the how and why of cocreation in the Fiat 500 open innovation project (‘500 wants you'), and the results achieved in terms of innovation generated and impact on the corporate brand image

Intra-firm knowledge sharing barriers: state of the art

Knowledge management has been identified as a practice for rapidly and effectively adapting in ever-changing environment. Within KM, knowledge sharing is considered a critical process for innovation generation and organizational efficiency. Indeed, the knowledge transfer process is often obstructed by the presence of barriers. Several factors has been identified by researchers; however literature lacks of a comprehensive review and categorization of these barriers. The paper analyzes the results of the researches on intra-firm/institution knowledge transfer in different disciplinary areas. The barriers/facilitators are categorized under five main dimensions: nature of knowledge, psychological, social, organizational and technological factors. The context-specific and complex nature of knowledge sharing fosters the proposition of a new theoretical model for knowledge sharing studies

Investigating the role of social capital in innovation: sparse versus dense network

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the literature on social capital and its contribution to innovation performance. Through an intensive review of the literature, the paper first analyzes the origin of the concept of social capital. It then explains the contribution of social capital within the organization and management studies. Further, social capital is considered the facilitator of knowledge search and knowledge sharing activities, which are considered of capital importance to innovation outcomes. Further, the paper clarifies the implications of social capital to two types of innovation: radical vs incremental innovation. Finally, the paper analyzes the structural dimension of social capital by focusing on the contribution of two different configurations and their effect on innovation: sparse vs cohesive networks. The paper contributes to the literature by uncovering the positive, but also the negative, drawbacks of social capital. Moreover, the paper focuses on the structural dimension of social capital and it discusses the controversial results of two different configurations of social capital (sparse vs cohesive networks) to the innovation performance. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review on both the positive and negative effects of social capital on innovation performance. The paper links social capital to the new innovation model, emphasizing the importance of social capital to knowledge search and sharing activities, and then to the innovation process. The authors suggest investigating the contribution of social capital according to firms' innovation scopes

Extending the enterprise for improved innovation

Complexity, turbulence, and unpredictability have driven the emergence of a new firm model, the extended enterprise(EE), which addresses the current challenges related to innovation and competition in complex scenarios. It has been defined as a set of collaborating companies, including suppliers, vendors, buyers, and customers, both upstream and downstream, from raw materials to end-use consumption, that work together to bring value to the marketplace (Davis and Spekman, 2004). This new organizational model is considered flexible and adaptive since it fosters knowledge sharing activities with different partners to improve innovation performance. However, few scholars offer a clear definition of what the EE really is and how it is evolving. In management literature, scholars tend to consider the extended enterprise and the network firm interchangeable. However, these two business models are very different and there is little research on how the EE differs from the network firm or how it attains its goals. This paper answers these questions by providing examples of EEs in different sectors