How to increase customer involvement through mass customization and customer co-design? That was the question we (Marko Mäkipää, Maria Mäntymäki and I) asked in our 29th Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia Helsingor paper. A draft is available: Download IRIS29_final_Makipaa_Ahonen_Mantymaki.pdf and the final paper will be available in the conference proceedings. Like described in the picture below, we were seeking a transition path from closed innovation to open innovation.
We found that when seeking to increase customer loyalty and attracting new customers, companies need to increase customer involvement in research and design (R&D) operation. This itself radically changes the innovation process and how ideas and customer communication are handled.
Brokering and social networking processes are therefore described in this open innovation context. The technology brokering process model by Hargadon and Sutton (1997) is used to describe open innovation. Or more like: how to search for new ideas and how to store them for further use. Certain business cases are introduced where the customers have a radically different role. The use and role of information systems in these processes are discussed. It would be great to receive feedback about this IRIS paper of ours.
Afterword: Marko Mäkipää has just received an acceptance of a Tekes project on mass customization, Maria Mäntymäki has a new job in the Center for Open Source Software (COSS) and I reported in my earlier post about a new open innovation research project. Some co-incidences ;-)
P.S. If you are interested in the connections of open innovation and co-design, please, ask for the older article by Pekka Ketola (Nokia Multimedia) and myself. Includes a Chinese mobile phone design case! Made for the 12th Product Development Management Conference, Copenhagen.
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