The Role of Social Software for Customer Co-Creation: Does it Change the Practice for Innovation?

Abstract

This article investigates a customer co-creation project at the front end of the innovation process at a large well-known Italian food manufacturer, which is enabled by social media. The purpose is to shed light on the role of such technology in transforming the characteristics of the FEI, in terms of boundaries and knowledge distance: what type of innovation ideas – exploratory or exploitative – does the practice enable? Could social media be used to manage the explore-exploit paradox, thus transforming the practice into an ambidextrous one? The empirical analysis highlights that the investigated customer co-creation practice has evolved from the initial stage of idea exploitation to a stage in which both exploitation and exploration are simultaneously accomplished.

A process-based framework of using social media to support innovation process

“…However, only a few studies investigate the use of social media for customer co-creation in open innovation and thus the mechanics of social media for cocreation is less understood [57]. Martini et al [76] conducted a case study with a large Italian food manufacturer and examined this company's customer co-creation practice enabled by social media. They found that this company used social media tools to engage customers in generating both incremental and radically innovative ideas.…”

“…More and more organizations are trying to leverage the power of social media for innovation. By engaging employees and customers in creating new products/services or improving existing products/services, organizations can enhance their innovation performance, gain a deeper understanding of customer behaviors and desires, adapt more quickly to changing trends, and achieve sustainable competitive advantages [8,76,94]. However, due to the novelty of social media and the complexity of innovation process, many firms are unclear about how best to use social media to facilitate innovation and achieve useful outcomes [77].…”

“…Social media may allow a company to engage employees or customers more efficiently and at a lower cost than using traditional communication and marketing tools such as focus group, surveys, flyers, TV ads and broadcasting [76]. In particular, social media make it possible to engage a larger number of customers in contributing to a co-design or co-development initiative [86].…”

Theoretical Analysis of The Use of Social Media in The Enterprise Activity

“…Istoriškai susiklostė, kad įmonės ir kliento sąveika orientuota į du 3 lentelė. Socialinių medijų klasifikacija pagal socialinį dalyvavimą / medijų gausumą ir savęs pristatymą / atskleidimą (Kaplan, Haenlein 2010) Socialinės medijos suteikia galimybę vartotojus pasiekti greičiau, efektyviau ir mažesne kaina, nei naudojant tradicines bendravimo ir rinkodaros priemones, tokias kaip skrajutės, televizijos reklamos ir transliacijos (Martini et al 2012). Gallaugher ir Ransbotham (2010) pateikė esminius pokyčius ryšiuose naudojant tradicines medijas ir dabartines socialines medijas.…”

Measuring the Perceived Functional Affordances of Collaborative Innovation Networks in Social Product Development

“…A recent and notable development with CoIN is the application of social technologies to engage actors through social mechanisms [3,15,18,29,38]. Distinctive from early open innovation approaches, the application of social mechanism in co-innovation represents a new business model enabled by social media technology platforms [1,38].…”