Openness and front end of innovation: does customer type matter?

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to study the moderating effect of customer type (business customers versus private customers) on the link between two forms of openness (cross-industry networks and customer integration) and two front-end innovation outcomes (a creative idea and a product definition), in the context of radical innovations.

Design/methodology/approach

An agreement was established with the Statistical Office of the Basque Government. This agreement enabled us to access a reliable list of innovative companies in the region that constituted our sample frame. Questionnaires were collected by phone. The response rate was 41.6%, which led to a sample size of 189 firms. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

Findings

The study reveals that idea creativity is explained by different external drivers in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) settings. In B2B settings, customer integration is found to have no effect on idea creativity. For product definition, however, both the external drivers, namely, cross-industry networks and customer integration, matter, although the latter is more salient.

Practical implications

In the search for creative ideas, managers of firms that serve business customers should focus on cross-industry networks, while those that serve private customers should concentrate on customer integration.

Originality/value

Most previous quantitative studies on the front end have focused on internal drivers, and some of them use a mix of B2B and B2C data, which could lead to misleading conclusions.

Citation

Barrutia, J.M., Velez, A. and Echebarria, C. (2019), "Openness and front end of innovation: does customer type matter?", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 536-549. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-06-2017-0134