Co-Creation from a Telecommunication Provider’s Perspective
Milica Šundić, Karl‐Heinz Leitner · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2018
Recently, a number of co-creation approaches and techniques have been proposed for supporting innovation processes. These range from traditionally organized ideation workshops within an organization, to implementation of open innovation methods that allow the involvement of various external and globally distributed partners. Particularly in dynamic and emerging industries, innovation seems necessary, with both closed and open approaches being applied. This chapter provides an empirical study on idea contests with customers and employees of a large telecommunications provider in Austria, and provides insight into the commercial feasibility of ideas, their origin, and likelihood, as well as how social media tools support community building during idea generation. Aiming at developing basic managerial implications on how to apply crowdsourcing effectively, we compare the outcomes of open, semi-open, and closed co-creation approaches, and discuss the importance of lead users and idea-sponsors. We find evidence for offline community building and other aspects supporting organizational crowdsourcing.