Customer Integration in Industrial Innovation Projects
1. Auflage
Erschienen am 2. August 2008
XIX, 268 Seiten
978-3-8349-9746-3 (ISBN)
Beschreibung
The fact that customers can be a major source of innovation is well known. Research traditions on user-driven innovation have received a lot of attention since the first - search attempts in the early 80s. With today's trend of opening up the internal inno- tion process, innovation actors are no longer restricted to R&D or cross-functional internal teams but include external partners as well. Open innovation and open R&D models are means to manage the increased technological complexity and customer - mands in the global market place. The roles of customers are no longer restricted to p- sive consumers whose latent requirements need to be identified. Instead they have become an active and important part of the innovation process. Von Hippel's 'Democ- tizing innovation' is today's mantra, but how are we to integrate customers in the in- vation process and how can such a process be managed? Patricia Sandmeier analyzes how companies can establish a continuing transfer of c- tomer knowledge to the innovator. She draws on more than 22 European companies and her analytical framework for the case analysis is based on the rather new approach of Extreme Programming (XP) in the software industry. While this approach and the - derlying agile project management practices have received a high acceptance among software engineers, the concept is less known in the 'hardware world' of new product creation.
Weitere Details
Weitere Ausgaben
Personen
Dr. Patricia Sandmeier promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann am Institut für Technologiemanagement der Universität St. Gallen, Schweiz. Sie ist Vorstandsassistentin bei ABB Schweiz.
Inhalt
Customer integration into product innovation: state-of-the-art in research.- Reference framework development based on Extreme Programming.- Customer integration in industrial product innovation practice.- Building theory on customer integration into product innovation.- Managerial implications for integrating customers into industrial product innovation.- Conclusion.
5 Building theory on customer integration into product innovation (S. 151-152)
The single case studies in chapter 4 demonstrated how customer integration takes place in the practices of four industrial product developers: two development contractors and two in-house developing companies. During the iterative process of data collection and single case analysis, tentative constructs and relationships that determine customer integration into innovation projects began to emerge. The following cross-case analysis captures and refines these constructs and relationships to extend existing theory on customer integration into product innovation by building some new theory.
For a cross-case analysis in general, a new perspective must be taken toward the case study data by applying other case comparison criteria than those given by the initial framework (Eisenhardt 1989), a second application of the framework used for data collection would not reveal new insights but rather simply answer the questions asked by this framework. As Eisenhardt (1989: 541) notes: Overall, the idea behind these cross-case searching tactics is to force investigators to go beyond initial impressions, especially through the use of structured and diverse lenses on the data. These tactics improve the likelihood of accurate and reliable theory, that is a theory with a close fit with the data. Therefore, instead of the XP-based reference framework, tentative constructs and relationships serve as the analysis criteria during this cross-case comparison.
Furthermore, to enhance internal validity, generalizability, and the theoretical level of theory building from the case study research, the cross-case analysis is conducted by continuously referring back to existing theory on customer integration into product innovation (Eisenhardt 1989). This procedure builds new research propositions that represent theory sentences, thus extending existing theory on customer integration into product innovation. The difference from quantitative research is that the evolving constructs, their definitions, and their measurement often emerge from the analysis process itself rather than being specified a priori (Eisenhardt 1989, Yin 1994).
In qualitative research, construct exploration and sharpening with data and existing theory is not a linear process but a highly iterative one. In line with the iterativeness of the analysis process, the presentation of results in this chapter does not correspond to the research process that led to the results but proceeds in a condensed manner to improve its clarity. First, the following section reconsiders each case study from the perspective of the identified constructs and relationships to provide a focused data summary, as well as an overview of the cross-case similarities and differences (5.1).
Second, the identified constructs and their relationships are elaborated from the perspective of existing theory on customer integration and product innovation, thereby leading to a conceptual model of customer contributions into product innovation (5.2). Third, linking the conceptual model from this theory with the case study data suggests research propositions that extend existing theory on customer integration into product innovation (5.3). Fourth, a summary of the model and propositions completes chapter 5 (5.4). Figure 5-1 offers an overview of the cross-case analysis and theory building as they are presented in this chapter.
The single case studies in chapter 4 demonstrated how customer integration takes place in the practices of four industrial product developers: two development contractors and two in-house developing companies. During the iterative process of data collection and single case analysis, tentative constructs and relationships that determine customer integration into innovation projects began to emerge. The following cross-case analysis captures and refines these constructs and relationships to extend existing theory on customer integration into product innovation by building some new theory.
For a cross-case analysis in general, a new perspective must be taken toward the case study data by applying other case comparison criteria than those given by the initial framework (Eisenhardt 1989), a second application of the framework used for data collection would not reveal new insights but rather simply answer the questions asked by this framework. As Eisenhardt (1989: 541) notes: Overall, the idea behind these cross-case searching tactics is to force investigators to go beyond initial impressions, especially through the use of structured and diverse lenses on the data. These tactics improve the likelihood of accurate and reliable theory, that is a theory with a close fit with the data. Therefore, instead of the XP-based reference framework, tentative constructs and relationships serve as the analysis criteria during this cross-case comparison.
Furthermore, to enhance internal validity, generalizability, and the theoretical level of theory building from the case study research, the cross-case analysis is conducted by continuously referring back to existing theory on customer integration into product innovation (Eisenhardt 1989). This procedure builds new research propositions that represent theory sentences, thus extending existing theory on customer integration into product innovation. The difference from quantitative research is that the evolving constructs, their definitions, and their measurement often emerge from the analysis process itself rather than being specified a priori (Eisenhardt 1989, Yin 1994).
In qualitative research, construct exploration and sharpening with data and existing theory is not a linear process but a highly iterative one. In line with the iterativeness of the analysis process, the presentation of results in this chapter does not correspond to the research process that led to the results but proceeds in a condensed manner to improve its clarity. First, the following section reconsiders each case study from the perspective of the identified constructs and relationships to provide a focused data summary, as well as an overview of the cross-case similarities and differences (5.1).
Second, the identified constructs and their relationships are elaborated from the perspective of existing theory on customer integration and product innovation, thereby leading to a conceptual model of customer contributions into product innovation (5.2). Third, linking the conceptual model from this theory with the case study data suggests research propositions that extend existing theory on customer integration into product innovation (5.3). Fourth, a summary of the model and propositions completes chapter 5 (5.4). Figure 5-1 offers an overview of the cross-case analysis and theory building as they are presented in this chapter.
