‘Responsible Co-Development’: The Dual Potential of Involving Customers in Innovation
(A2020-64085)

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

Companies are increasingly involving their customers in innovation to access additional knowledge and, thereby, develop superior new products and services. One specific form of this customer involvement is customer co-development (CCD) as the collaboration between firms and customers to jointly create new offerings. Complementing practitioners’ interest in CCD, research has sought to identify how and when firms benefit from CCD. However, the pressure on firms to consider how their innovation activities affect a broader set of stakeholders and to account for societal consequences is increasing. How CCD might help firms in their efforts to use innovation towards societal value creation (i.e., responsible innovation) is thus an emerging issue, both in practice and in research, which has been investigating the economic benefits of CCD, primarily from a firm perspective. To address this shortcoming, this research aims to advance a conceptual model of responsible co-development, based on integrating the responsible innovation perspective with CCD.