CUSTOMER INTEGRATION IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - A LITERATURE REVIEW CONCERNING THE APPROPRIATENESS OF DIFFERENT CUSTOMER INTEGRATION METHODS TO ATTAIN CUSTOMER KNOWLEDGE

In many instances, customers are seen as one of the key resources for new product development (NPD), as they often have deep product knowledge as well as experience and creativity potential gained by regular product usage. From knowledge management perspective, customers? input to NPD is manifested in different forms of knowledge. Customers? input to NPD typically reflects their needs and wishes (need information) but may also represent suggestions describing how ideas can be transferred into marketable products (solution information), in some cases they even lead to radical innovations (leading edge information). In order to internalize customer knowledge, in theory different methods are discussed. However, little is known about these methods? effectiveness and efficiency to transmit customers? knowledge to firms. This research identifies a total of 15 methods with the help of a systematic literature review. By systematically analyzing these methods we found that there are methods within which customers are involved only ?passively? in NPD, as well as methods that enable a more ?active? customer integration. This study exhibits that the methods which enable an active customer integration, in comparison to methods where customers are integrated only passively in NPD, are more suitable for attaining customer knowledge within innovation development

Towards Successful Crowdsourcing Projects: Evaluating the Implementation of Governance Mechanisms

The last decade has witnessed the proliferation of crowdsourcing in various academic domains including strategic management, computer science, or IS research. Numerous companies have drawn on this concept and leveraged the wisdom of crowds for various purposes. However, not all crowdsourcing projects turn out to be a striking success. Hence, research and practice are on the lookout for the main factors influencing the success of crowdsourcing projects. In this context, proper governance is considered as the key to success by several researchers. However, little is known about governance mechanisms and their impact on project outcomes. We address this issue by means of a multiple case analysis in the scope of which we examine crowdsourcing projects on collaboration-based and/or competition-based crowdsourcing systems. Our initial study reveals that task definition mechanisms and quality assurance mechanisms have the highest impact on the success of crowdsourcing projects, whereas task allocation mechanisms are less decisive

Not Only for Ideation, But Also for Signaling: Incorporating User-Profile-Webpages into Virtual Ideas Communities

ABSTRACT This research-in-progress-paper describes the case of SAPiens, which is a Virtual Ideas Community (VI

ANALYZING GOVERNANCE MECHANISMS FOR CROWDSOURCING INFORMATION SYSTEMS: A MULTIPLE CASE ANALYSIS

Crowdsourcing has gained much attention in practice over the last years. Numerous companies have drawn on this concept for performing different tasks and valu creation activities. Nevertheless, despite its popularity, there is still comparatively little well-founded knowledge on crowdsourcing, particularly with regard to the governance of crowdsourcing initiatives. Although proper governance is considered as the key to success by several researchers, little is known about governance mechanisms and their use in crowdsourcing initiatives. We address this issu by conducting a multiple case analysis in the scope of which we examine the governance mechanisms implemented in three different crowdsourcing information systems (i.e., crowd rating, crowd processing and crowd solving). For each system, we outline what kinds of governance mechanisms are used and how these are implemented. An initial comparison shows that relatively more mechanisms are used in crowd solving systems compared to crowd rating as well as crowd processing systems