Collaborating to Create: The Internet as a Platform for Customer Engagement in Product Innovation

In the networked world, firms are recognizing the power of the Internet as a platform for co-creating value with customers. A key aspect of co-creation is collaborative innovation engaging customers in the firm's product innovation process. We focus on how firms can use the Internet as an enabling platform for collaborative product innovation. We outline key differentiating capabilities of the Internet as a platform for customer engagement, including interactivity, enhanced reach, persistence, speed and flexibility, and suggest that firms can use these capabilities to engage customers in collaborative product innovation through a variety of Internet-based mechanisms. We discuss how these Internet-based mechanisms can enhance collaborative innovation at different stages of the New Product Development (NPD) process and based on different types of customer involvement. We present two detailed exploratory case studies to illustrate how leading firms are engaging in collaborative innovation with customers - Ducati from the automotive industry and Eli Lilly from the pharmaceutical industry. We derive implications for managerial practice and research on collaborative innovation.