‘Responsible Co-Development’: The Dual Potential of Involving Customers in Innovation
(R2020-84563)

AUTHORS

Lisa Welzenbach, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Institute for Innovation Management; Jelena Spanjol, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich

KEYWORDS

customer co-development; responsible innovation; organizational learning

ABSTRACT

Customer Co-Development (CCD), i.e., the collaboration between firms and customers to jointly create new products, has received increasing interest in the last years. Complementing practitioners’ interest, academic research has sought to identify how and when firms benefit from CCD. Simultaneously, the pressure on firms to consider how their innovation activities affect a broader set of stakeholders is increasing. How CCD might help firms in using innovation towards societal value creation (i.e., responsible innovation) is thus an emerging issue in practice and research. Therefore, this research advances a conceptual model of responsible co-development by integrating the responsible innovation perspective with CCD.