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This study aims to present a novel approach of using technology trends to trigger product ideas. It is primarily addressed to product ideation where limited applied approaches are available.

The model is built by extending the theoretical framework of ideation study. It comprises morphological analysis with product breakdown as primary and technological trends as a secondary dimension to prompt product ideas from user’s intuition. The approach is multidisciplinary using insights from the areas of cognition, management strategy and project management. The model is further tested in two different test configurations with university students (n = 81).

The results indicate that this systematic model can increase the quality and number of ideas generated by the students compared to generally practised approaches. It is shown that this approach increases the chances of triggering ideas.

The testing of the present model is comprehensive and in no means exhaustive.

Because of the shrinking product life cycle, organisations have a need for systematic product ideation models that can assist in innovating their product ranges. It is important to study idea generation for products to not only assist product innovation but also comprehensively understand the process of creativity. The proposed model is primarily addressed to product innovation projects where limited practical tools are available for product ideation. The present model is easy to apply and has the tendency to generate novel product ideas that can lead to successful product innovations.

Product innovation currently has limited systematic ideation tools where this study contributes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate asymmetric effects of team cohesion and team members’ relational qualification on the creativity of new product ideas.

Structural equation modeling was conducted on survey data collected from 195 new product development practitioners in various US high-technology industries.

The study suggests that creative and potentially successful product ideas include three dimensions – usefulness for customers, and novelty for customers and usefulness for the firms (i.e. enhancement efficiency and effectiveness of companies’ new product development process). By focusing on a relational aspect of new product development teams, the study shows that team task cohesion mediates the relationship between the antecedents (team members’ organizational commitment and social competency) and the three outcome dimensions of a successful product idea (novelty, usefulness to customers and usefulness to the firm). The team members’ interpersonal relationship has no positive association with task cohesion and the desirable qualifications of product ideas.

An ideation team’s socially competent members who identify with their organization are likely to be attracted to a given task. This task cohesion, in turn, enhances the creativeness of the development of product ideas.

To generate fruitful product ideas using a team approach, companies should make sure that their new product ideation teams achieve a sense of mutual commitment to the given ideation tasks, develop a feeling of belongingness and ownership toward the firms and include members who have good social and interpersonal skills. However, the possession of strong social cohesion is not essential for the teams.

This study provides novel insights concerning the relational aspect of product development teams assigned to the initiation phase (front end) of a new product development process.

This paper aims to analyze the implications of communicating customer involvement in the ideation and concept stage of new product development (NPD). This paper assesses the extent to which the awareness that a product was co-created jointly by company professional designers and consumers affects observer consumers’ attitudes toward the product and the company. While earlier research has mainly emphasized the positive and desirable consequences of consumer participation in NPD, the present set of studies shows that labeling products as having been co-created is not always valuable; rather, it is dependent on the level of perceived complexity of the products.

The hypotheses are tested in four experimental studies using several categories of product complexity (low, medium and high). The data have been collected on young adult samples, measuring the participants’ perceptions of a firm’s innovation ability and product purchase intentions.

The results suggest that there are benefits at the corporate level (higher perceptions of innovation ability) to inform the market about consumer involvement, particularly when consumers and company professionals work together. The findings also indicate that product complexity plays a critical role in translating the perceptions of greater corporate abilities (innovation) in purchase intention, and it is particularly beneficial for low-complexity products.

The previous research has mainly focused on the impact of involving consumers in firms and participating consumers; however, it has neglected the role of observer consumers. This study adds to the innovation literature by showing that the value of learning about other consumers’ involvement in firm NPD is not universally beneficial and that product complexity is a critical boundary condition.

This study investigates the intellectual structure of the front-end of innovation (FEI) research field and elaborates a lifecycle model, which embraces the FEI progress and conceptual development.

This study analysed 355 papers published from 1987 to 2020 in the Scopus and Web of Science databases through bibliometrics, network analysis and content analysis.

This study reveals FEI research themes and topics and explores their evolution through three periods. In addition, following a lifecycle approach, it also sets the research field foundation and discusses the maturity and potential progress of the FEI intellectual structure.

This study complements the existing FEI reviews by capturing the most relevant topics in the area, showing how these topics relate to each other to form the intellectual domain and providing insights concerning the research progress through different lifecycle stages. It also extends the FEI database used in the other literature reviews.

Vietnamese agro-food firms are often small and have short value chains. They are facing increasing competition from multinationals to serve the consumers of the rising middle class. It is assumed that co-creation or open-innovation can be a competitive innovation strategy for the Vietnamese firms. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to understand whether the agro-food firms have the “mental space” or an according mindset to innovate with their customers.

A three dimensional model of “mental innovation space” (MIS) was developed, comprising of the: focus of innovation, level of innovation and degree of collaboration. A total of 14 Vietnamese agro-food companies agreed to embark on a process of problem definition for innovation according to these three dimensions. This process creates a deeper understanding of the firms’ fuzzy front end of innovation and results in less hypothetical findings, compared with traditional interviews.

The results show that the Vietnamese agro-food firms have a rather small MIS. They are inexperienced with innovation in new product development and are even more unfamiliar with co-creation. However, the firms recognise the need for innovation and are enthusiastic about the use of co-creation. The applications of co-creation firms foresee are close to the market, motivated by meeting customer demand and keeping up with competitors.

The characteristics and willingness of the Vietnamese agro-food firms make that it is believed an open atmosphere can be created. Then, co-creation can foster innovation in order to strengthen their competitive position.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this study is to explore how do the characteristics of technology business incubators (TBIs), their chief executive officers, selection process and incubation process influence their research and development (R&D) contributions to the national economy.

These research questions are probed based on primary data gathered from 65 TBIs located in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, 3 of the leading start-up hubs of India comprising 9 accelerators, 31 incubators and 25 co-working spaces. Stepwise (backward elimination) regression method has been applied for six regression models for the analysis of research objectives.

Incubators more than accelerators and co-working spaces have incurred R&D investments for infrastructure development and hired exclusive R&D personnel. External networks and size of incubators in terms of number of incubatees are decisive for R&D investments and new products/services. TBIs accounted for a negligible share of patents relative to the number of new products/services generated in these TBIs, thereby indicating “low level of novelty/innovativeness” of new products/services. However, both new products/services and patent applications are crucial for revenue generation, implying that the generated new products/services are able to penetrate the market and patent application submission can act as a “signal” to the market.

The overall research findings portend that there is scope and potential for an increasing R&D contribution to emerge from the TBIs along with their incubated start-ups, to supplement the national R&D efforts in India in the future. The emphasis, of course, has to be more on strengthening the innovation ecosystem through TBIs by means of industry–institute partnerships.

This study’s practical implications refer to the need to promote TBIs as a means of strengthening regional innovation systems in developing economies.

TBIs can be a means of nurturing tech start-ups for generating employment and income in regional economies.

This is a first of its kind study with reference to an emerging economy exploring to understand the extent of R&D contributions emerging from TBIs, which have been promoted on an increasing scale across the country as a means of nurturing technology start-ups.

This paper aims to examine the influences of consumer-perceived new-product creativity (NPC) on consumers’ purchase intentions (PIs), along with the mediating effects of NPC meaningfulness between NPC novelty and PI, and between NPC communicableness and PI.

Data were collected through a self-administrated survey approach in the South West of the USA. Hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modeling and a sample consisted of 463 respondents.

The study shows that new-product novelty and communicableness are positively related to consumers’ PIs while new-product meaningfulness mediates these relationships.

This research advances the existing creativity literature by probing the core component among different creativity constructs. The study also contributes to the consumer-behavior literature, which has rarely examined consumers’ perceived creativity.

This research offers theoretical foundations and guidelines for entrepreneurs and small firms to develop new products and promotion strategies. Usefulness as a dominant product/service factor should be emphasized in practice.

A research gap at the interface of new product development and consumer behavior is addressed by investigating the effect of consumer-perceived NPC on consumers’ purchase behaviors.

This study aims to investigate the outcomes of customers’ co-creation experience in a realistic and routinely performed co-creation setting, a restaurant. To fulfill this purpose, the current study links the branding literature to hospitality research and offers a novel framework by incorporating customers’ co-creation experience, customer brand engagement, emotional brand attachment and customer satisfaction in an integrated research model.

Data were collected from 421 diners at Chinese hotpot restaurants via a self-administered questionnaire. The reliability and convergent and discriminant validities were established through confirmatory factor analysis, and then hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling.

This study demonstrates that customers’ co-creation experience with a restaurant brand positively impacts customer brand engagement, emotional brand attachment and customer satisfaction. In addition, current study examines these relational paths at the dimensional level by taking the co-creation experience and customer brand engagement as multidimensional constructs. The resulting in-depth investigation reveals that the hedonic, social and economic experience dimensions of co-creation experience positively influence customer satisfaction, emotional brand attachment and customer brand engagement’s buying, referring, influencing and feedback dimensions.

This study helps relationship and brand managers better understand customer experience in co-creation settings and paves the way for managers to devise engagement strategies.

The current study marks an initial attempt to delineate the outcomes of customers’ co-creation experience in a realistic co-creation setting. Furthermore, the study is first of its kind that investigates the relationship of co-creation experience and customer brand engagement at the dimensional level.

This paper aims to discuss a foresight study conducted in Singapore’s national R&D agency to help science and technology decision makers identify key capability areas of R&D investment to support the manufacturing industry’s growth in the country and the region.

Using horizon scanning, scenario analysis and expert opinion, nine capabilities are identified as core areas to be developed to support the country’s future growth of product-service systems.

The results of a Delphi survey involving 30 industry and academic thought leaders recommend priorities of these capabilities. This paper concludes with a discussion of the study implications for theory, research and practice in the domain of servitisation and product-service systems.

The foresight study presented here on the future of servitisation in Singapore demonstrates one of the first fully fledged applications of foresight in constructing a coherent vision of future product-service system markets. In this study, the authors applied systemic foresight methodology (SFM) comprising the first six phases: initiation (scoping), intelligence (scanning), imagination (scenarios), integration (priorities), interpretation (strategies) and implementation (action).For future research, an ideal step would be to proceed with the final phase of the SFM, impact, to develop indicators for servitisation and to monitor and evaluate the transition process.

Manufacturing and services are no longer distinct concepts with a clear divide. Manufacturing firms not only become more service dependent but also produce and provide services for their consumers. This transformation towards servitisation implies fundamental re-organisation of the production and management practices. Furthermore, through new business models, new and loyal customers will be gained, which will in turn bring additional income, while making the companies less prone to economic and business fluctuations.

The results of this study have practical implications for policymakers of public and private sectors that are interested in playing a key role in future product-service system innovation. These have implications for developing the human and intellectual capital that are required for supporting the future innovation. Institutes of higher learning and vocational institutes should also consider incorporating new curricula and modules to build the capabilities for knowledge creation and transfer.

The findings of the present study on strategic growth areas and relevant critical capabilities provide new directions for research in the field of servitisation. Among the nine capabilities identified, the top three were advanced customer intelligence capability, socio-physical service quality, traceability and maintainability and integrated strategic decision-making. From the results, it is apparent that advanced customer intelligence capability is both an area of importance to Singapore and the world.