Customer roles in innovations

• The purpose of this paper is to discuss and classify the roles of customers in innovations. In literature on innovations, customers have been increasingly emphasised as a source for innovations and also in how they help developing ideas in their early phases. This paper exemplifies various customer roles in innovations through three case studies. These describe the customer as initiator, as co-producer and as central party for business development. Through using role theory to discuss customers in innovations, it becomes explicit how customers may act their traditional roles, add roles or transfer to new roles beyond the scope of being a customer. Furthermore, the paper shows that customer roles change during the innovation process, from added or transferred roles in early phases to more traditional ones i later phases of the innovation process

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

SOCIAL SCIENCES

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP

Innovation; customer; role; phase

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)