For our series of featured research on open innovation and mass customization, today — in another act of shameless self-promotion — a new paper from our group at RWTH Aachen University in which we discuss the impact of social media on co-creation of innovation.
From Social Media to Social Product Development: The Impact of Social Media on Co-Creation of Innovation
By Frank Piller, Alexander Vossen, Christoph Ihl (RWTH Aachen University)
Published in: Die Unternehmung – Swiss Journal of Business Research and Practice, Volume 66, No 1 (March 2012), pp. 7-26. Free download at nomos.de
In this paper, my fellow researchers Alexander Vossen and Christoph Ihl discuss with me the impact of social media on customer co-creation in the innovation process.
Customer cocreation denotes an active, creative and social collaboration process between producers and customers (users), facilitated by a company, in the context of new product or service development. We propose a typology of co-creation activities in order to develop conceptual arguments how social media can impact the relationships among customers involved in co-creation as well as the relationship between customers and the hosting firm.
Interestingly, the impact of social media on customer co-creation may be two-sided: Social media can make economic- exchange relations more collaborative and social, but may also turn relations formerly based on social-exchange into “money markets” with strong competition among actors.
As a result of this paradox, we develop a set of questions that can lead future research in these regards. Read the article for our full argument.
