INTERMEDIATE SEARCH ELEMENTS AND METHOD COMBINATION IN LEAD-USER SEARCHES

Sampsa Hyysalo (), Pia Helminen (), Samuli Mäkinen (), Mikael Johnson (), Jouni K. Juntunen () and Stephanie Freeman ()
Additional contact information
Sampsa Hyysalo: Department of Design & Department of Management Studies, Aalto University, P. O. Box 31000, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland
Pia Helminen: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University, P. O. Box 17700, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland
Samuli Mäkinen: Department of Engineering Design and Production, Aalto University, P. O. Box 17700, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland
Mikael Johnson: Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT, Aalto University, P. O. Box 15600, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland
Jouni K. Juntunen: Department of Management Studies, Aalto University, P. O. Box 21210, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland
Stephanie Freeman: Department of Management Studies, Aalto University, P. O. Box 21210, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), 2015, vol. 19, issue 01, 1-41

Abstract: Users play an increasingly important role in product and service innovation. Finding the right users can require substantial search effort. Network searches are increasingly popular in searching for rare lead users. In these searches, implicit and inexact referrals have been found to comprise a substantial number of network referrals; numbers as high as 70% of the most important referrals to sought people have been reported. To aid handling such referrals during network searches, we explicate their status as intermediate referral types, and how these referral types relate to known search methods. The constraints set by intermediate referrals could potentially be overcome and their potential be capitalized through more extensive method combination in network searches than has been trialed to date. We proceed to offer a proof of concept for such searches through documenting how we ran them in four realworld searches and chart future research avenues.

Keywords: Lead users; user innovation; network search; pyramiding; intermediate referrals; implicit referrals; inexact referrals; combinatory search; rare research subjects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1142/S1363919615500073

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