 Openness of innovating: the new roles of customers and users in business-to-business contextHanna Nordlund, Tea Lempiala and Mari Holopainen International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 2011, vol. 14, issue 4, 282-297 Abstract: This paper discusses open innovation from the viewpoint of customers and users, focusing on their new roles. The paper focuses particularly on the 'user as the innovator' approach that encourages outsourcing at least parts of innovation process to users and user communities. The 'user as the innovator' approach is based on three premises in the existing literature: users are capable and willing to innovate, communities are important entities in innovation activity and users are willing to freely reveal their ideas. The empirical material comes mainly from business-to-consumer contexts. The aim of this paper is to highlight the characteristics of the business-to-business context and discuss the premises in that light. Finally, the paper proposes a future research agenda in order to better understand and capitalise on the 'user as the innovator' approach in business-to-business contexts. Keywords: open innovation; users; innovators; B2B; business-to-business; openness; new roles; customers; outsourcing; innovation processes; user capability; user willingness; innovation activity; ideas; B2C; business-to-consumer; entrepreneurship; innovation management; social media; user communities. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijeima:v:14:y:2011:i:4:p:282-297 Access Statistics for this article More articles in International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.