Customers as part of value Webs: towards a framework for webbed customer innovation tools

Abstract

As the classical corporate boundaries are beginning to blur internally as well as externally traditional value chains loose their chain attributes, and are replaced by a web of fluid and flexible relations - the value web. This paper extends the common view of value webs by defining customers as an important part of value creation. Customer integration into innovation processes taking place within a value web (a process that is coined "webbed customer innovation" in this paper) is discussed as a beneficial method to overcome some of the flaws and challenges of new product and technology development. The role of the customer is changing from a pure consumer of products or services to a coequal partner in a process of adding value - consumers are becoming co-producers and co-designers. We offer in this paper a framework for webbed customer innovation tools by introducing the concept of the customer-integration cube (CIC). The CIC renders a systematisation of webbed customer innovation tools on the basis of specific dimensions, which were identified as most important, and serves as an originator to reveal possible lacks of webbed customer innovation attempts.

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