Unpacking Stickiness: Categorizing User Inputs and Knowledge for Innovation
Yat Ming Ooi, Husted, K · ResearchSpace (University of Auckland) · 2014
Firms are increasingly involving their customers in their innovation processes. Customers co-develop products, provide feedback, and provide specific problem- and solution-based customer knowledge. This phenomenon has been extensively studied in the user innovation literature from a user-centric perspective. Less attention is paid to examining the micro-foundations of how firms use user knowledge to generate innovative outcomes. We offer a starting point to addressing this issue, by categorizing user inputs grounded on the knowledge characteristics of embedded user knowledge and innovation dimensions of the outcomes. Categorizing user inputs can provide a clearer indication of the user knowledge that firms can access, transfer, and utilize throughout the user innovation process. We systematically review the user innovation literature and apply a knowledge management and micro-foundations perspectives to propose four categories of user inputs with varying knowledge characteristics. The review enables the identification of a range of practices and issues for transferring user knowledge that forms the micro-foundations of user innovation phenomenon.