“Collaborative Innovation: Web-based tools for customer involvement in new product development”

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the practices of firms that intensively use the Web to cooperate with their customers across their innovation processes, by addressing two questions: (1) What are the properties of virtual environments enabling collaborative innovation? (2) How can firms involve customers through the Web in different new product development activities? To answer these questions, the chapter is structured as follows. The authors provide an overview of the literature in which they discuss various conceptualizations of customer knowledge and customer involvement in the firm’s innovation processes. Then they highlight key patterns in technology marketing that enhance direct collaboration with individual customers and communities of customers. They finally use the review to develop their collaborative innovation conceptual framework, providing a comprehensive picture about the tools enabled by the latest ICT developments to support new product development. The last part of the chapter points out the limitations of the analysis, the implications for management, and the future directions for research.