Collaborating With Customers To Innovate

The Internet has created the problem of an increasing need for innovation, but - as this volume explains - also provides the solution. The authors explore the collaborative potential offered by customers in digital environments to enhance the effectiveness of new product development.

Today’s consumers are more knowledgeable, networked, and vocal. For them consumption is not merely an act of buying products and services, but an expression of their creative potential. Consequently, they are demanding a say and a voice in how companies conceive, develop, and deliver value to them. It is not surprising, therefore, to hear that a large number of companies are transforming how they innovate—not only in terms of developing new products and services, but in how they are created, delivered, and supported to customers. Open Innovation thinking, where companies collaborate with suppliers, distributors, and customers to co-create unique value, is fast replacing traditional thinking that viewed innovation as a proprietary activity and marketing as a static, one-way broadcast. However, while there is significant advocacy and buy-in for collaborating with customers, there is little guidance for companies on how to undertake the journey from applause and appreciation to execution. Only reading about others’ success stories – Nike, Hallmark, P&G, Mozilla, etc. – is not sufficient for helping a company develop a blueprint for themselves. In Customer Driven Innovation, strategy and branding consultant Gaurav Bhalla presents a concrete framework to help companies systematically and effectively design and implement collaborative innovation programs with their customers that can be applied in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer contexts. The authors describe how today’s technologies allow companies to create dynamic dialogues with their customers through shared networks, virtual marketing techniques, and blogs to develop deeper relationships that reinforce brand loyalty and ultimately drive growth. They challenge traditional approaches to market research that measure "customer satisfaction" from a rear-window perspective, and help companies and their customers look forward instead.P>

A new set of organizations has discovered a new formula: they combine customer-centricity with innovative power. These organizations have created a completely outside-in approach to the market. Not driven by what they're good at, they start with the market and design their strategy around it, replacing practices of the past with a new set of capabilities which enable them to be ahead of the curve in discovering new market opportunities. Whereas the traditional value chain model regards the market as the end-outcome of the efforts of the organization, the reversed value chain model starts there. The customer is the starting point and the value chain is the result of understanding customer needs and requirements. Customer Innovation presents this unique case for developing the outside-in organization to drive your business success, combining market orientation with innovation to enable actionable positive change in the way your company does business. Winner of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship category of the 2015 CMI Management Book of the Year Awards, Customer Innovation provides every business with the framework it needs to combine customer focus with innovation to achieve success. It is packed with real world examples from a range of leading global companies including Disney, Coca-Cola, LEGO, Eurex, Netflix, KLM, Carglass, Komatsu, Callebaut and more to help you put market awareness at the heart of your business.

While innovation is widely recognised as being critical to organisational success and the well-being of societies, it requires careful management to ensure that innovation processes have the best possible impact. This volume provides a wide range of perspectives on the nature of innovation management and its influences.

Engaging customers has become an effective strategy of marketers for improving customer-brand relationships as customer engagement is a perfect predictor of organic growth. Aggressive sales promotions, advertising campaigns, rewards, discounts, and more may attract a customer, but customer engagement creates an emotional connection with the brands/firms/services, which drives customer loyalty and long-term profitability. This has become much more applicable and effective with the use of social media platforms and the increased access of internet. Moreover, the implementation of customer analytics to measure engagement activities has provided marketers with more insights for improving services. Insights, Innovation, and Analytics for Optimal Customer Engagement is an advanced reference book that covers the latest emerging research in customer engagement and includes underlying theories, innovative methods, a review of existing literature, engagement analytics, and insights for marketers with reference to customer engagement. The book covers various product categories, industries, and sectors that are working to engage customers in inventive and creative ways. This book is a comprehensive reference tool for marketers, brand managers, social media specialists, advertisers, managers, executives, academicians, researchers, practitioners, and students interested in gaining comprehensive knowledge about customer engagement and the latest advancements in the field.

This book is published under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. The editors present essential methods and tools to support a holistic approach to the challenge of system upgrades and innovation in the context of high-value products and services. The approach presented here is based on three main pillars: an adaptation mechanism based on a broad understanding of system dependencies; efficient use of system knowledge through involvement of actors throughout the process; and technological solutions to enable efficient actor communication and information handling. The book provides readers with a better understanding of the factors that influence decisions, and put forward solutions to facilitate the rapid adaptation to changes in the business environment and customer needs through intelligent upgrade interventions. Further, it examines a number of sample cases from various contexts including car manufacturing, utilities, shipping and the furniture industry. The book offers a valuable resource for both academics and practitioners interested in the upgrading of capital-intensive products and services. “The work performed in the project “Use-It-Wisely (UiW)” significantly contributes towards a collaborative way of working. Moreover, it offers comprehensive system modelling to identify business opportunities and develop technical solutions within industrial value networks. The developed UiW-framework fills a void and offers a great opportunity. The naval construction sector of small passenger vessels, for instance, is one industry that can benefit.” Nikitas Nikitakos, Professor at University of the Aegean, Department of Shipping, Trade, and Transport, Greece. “Long-life assets are crucial for both the future competiveness and sustainability of society. Make wrong choices now and you are locked into a wrong system for a long time. Make the right choices now and society can prosper. This book gives important information about how manufacturers can make right choices.” Arnold Tukker, Scientific director, Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University, and senior scientist, TNO.

Innovation and Collaboration in the Digital Era provides a holistic approach to collaborative innovation, innovation management and innovation leadership. It is full of practical advice and includes 34 interviews with high-level politicians, innovation industry leaders, academics and entrepreneurs discussing the reality of innovation and how to create change for a positive impact. Many quotes are included from researchers and practitioners in the innovation field who have participated as guests in the author’s podcast “Business of Collaboration” or in interviews with the Collabwith Magazine which she produces. This is a powerful book full of practical frameworks and one-page canvases which act as reminders of the value of making needs and expectations explicit. The author provides frameworks and tools that can be used to support collaboration journeys across different sectors and organizations. She also offers clarity to the reader for their innovation journey and brings a new perspective on how to innovate and understand innovation. Jara Pascual focuses on the importance of managing emotions and feelings of frustration which can be very common during a collaborative innovation process. She explores the interaction between Emotional Intelligence and business and shows how to remove and manage frustration and how to produce a positive outcome. Innovation and Collaboration in the Digital Era will empower the reader to take action and show how to change your conversation about innovation and collaboration. “Jara Pascual, with colleague Celia Avila-Rauch, has been able to distill and apply the ability model of emotional intelligence to the art and science of innovation and innovation leadership. In our work we note that feelings are not always facts but that emotions as a form of data. More than that, emotions can assist or facilitate with decision making, creativity and innovation rather than getting in the way, but only if leaders are “smart” about emotions and develop and deploy their emotional intelligence skills.” Dr David R Caruso, Emotional Intelligence Skills Group, Founder Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Research Affiliate

This book explores the relationships between knowledge management (KM) processes and innovation management. The geographical extension of markets and intensification of competition have led firms to experiment with novel approaches to innovation. New organizational forms emerged in which firms collaborate with various stakeholders to create, absorb, integrate and protect knowledge. This book explores how knowledge management processes evolve with firms' implementation of interactive, collaborative and open innovation models and it identifies the various knowledge types and processes involved throughout the different phases of the innovation process. The authors provide operational typologies for understanding innovative firms' capabilities and knowledge management practices and also discuss the main properties of four models of interactive innovation, namely open innovation, user-centric innovation, community-based innovation and crowdsourcing.