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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.

Traditional marketing strategies assume that customers involve (e.g. search, assess, purchase, use) with products or services mostly at the end of their value chain as finished market offerings. This article challenges managers to invite target customers to be involved at all stages of the value chain. The specific purpose of our new customer‐value‐chain involvement (CVCI) model is to enhance customer relationship management in conjunction with supply chain management, employee relationship management) and retailer partners’ relationship management. There are definite advantages to CVCI as it can provide continuous customer feedback and enable more objective quality assessment and judgment, but most importantly, it can elevate customer satisfaction to customer delight that spawns lifetime loyalty and positive referrals. The importance and managerial implications of CVCI are discussed.

Sustaining product innovation in an established company – increasingly the key to a company’s economic success, and perhaps its survival – is a challenging task The author describes a and the model often referred to as an “Idea lab” that has emerged as a necessary organizational feature to accomplish this goal.

The author explains how to manage Idea labs as deliberately established locations, where individuals and teams with new product ideas can work together for concentrated bursts of time, sharpening and focusing their product concept, embedding the voice of the customer in product design and charting alternative progression paths for their ideas to be developed into potentially profitable offerings by units of the business that will nurture them.

In today’s organizations, the managerial prime directive is fundamentally being redefined as one of addressing the challenge of sustained, profitable innovation that opens new markets or reinvigorates existing ones. Idea labs should be considered a vital process in fostering sustaining innovation.

A critical success factor is the interplay between idea originators, technology specialists and product managers with a keen awareness of customer needs, competitor initiatives and genuine product differentiation.

A comprehensive guide for top managers and innovators, the article details the four key facets of Idea labs: Positioning in the firm’s innovation value chain. Tasks. Processes. Structure.

This study focuses on the relationship between innovation and customer equity drivers and the moderating effect of advertising appeals on this relationship. First, the authors divided innovation into incremental innovation and radical innovation, and explained the influences of each type of innovation on drivers of customer equity based on literature review. Second, the authors tested the conceptual model using structural equation modeling find out the effects of innovation. Third, the authors also tested the effect of advertising appeal using moderating regression. The results indicate that both incremental innovation and radical innovation can positively influence value equity, relationship equity, and brand equity. Functional advertising appeal is more useful than emotional advertising appeal for radical innovation. On the contrary, emotional advertising appeal is more useful than functional advertising appeal for incremental innovation.

This chapter considers the role of entrepreneurship theory in the development of ideation techniques for entrepreneurship education. It begins by considering how metatheories impact theory construction in entrepreneurship research and discusses the role of ontology, epistemology, axiology, as well as the role of assumptions about human nature and social change. The chapter presents four different paradigms of thought that apply different philosophies and illustrates how these different paradigms conceptualize entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial opportunity differently. The four paradigms include the equilibrium paradigm, the disequilibrium paradigm, the disruptive innovation paradigm, and the social constructionism paradigm. Within each paradigm, the nature of entrepreneurial opportunity is discussed, and the chapter provides examples to show how different ideation techniques can be generated from these different conceptualizations. Forms of ideation technique are presented and explained, as they relate to each paradigm, and the chapter concludes by explaining the value of these techniques for ideation, opportunity discovery, and creation, in the entrepreneurial process.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a concept‐response segmentation used to identify different customer “mind‐sets”. Based on this segmentation, in a merchandising situation, one can interact with the customer to identify the segment to which the customer belongs and in turn offer the proper product and merchandising.

The study deals with the creation of new hair products, using both ideation by brand Delphi™ and by experimental design of ideas with conjoint measurement (IdeaMap.Net). It ends with the creation of a merchandising product for hair coloring based on concept segmentation. First the internet was used to facilitate the acquisition and prioritization of new ideas. Then the experimental design of ideas was used to identify which perform well in the body of test concepts.

Three segments were identified: Segment 1 (54 percent) wants easy to use, high technology, and reliable products. Segment 2 (25 percent) wants to give, and get information about themselves, with respect to hair coloring. Furthermore, they want to make information giving/getting a process, not simply a rapid 1‐2‐3 affair. Segment 3 (21 percent) wants results. They want information, primarily what the product will do for them, what it delivers.

The innovative research deals with the creation of “new to the world” product ideas and the segmentation of respondents into different groups, based on their mind‐sets.

The segmentation results provide the manufacturer and the trade with an opportunity to fine‐tune the development of the new product and its merchandising. One of the recurring questions, however, is how to find these segments in the population? Data mining works by searching for assignment rules that put people into the segments based on a decision rule. The variables used by the decision rule come from external information about the respondent, which the respondent may have provided previously, or patterns of purchases that the individual may have made over time. The objective is to increase the chances of correctly classifying a new individual as a member of one of the three segments, and by so doing present the prospect with a better offer, whether an improved product or shopping experience.

The study deals with the creation of new hair products, using both ideation by brand Delphi™ and by experimental design of ideas with conjoint measurement (IdeaMap.Net). This is a discussion towards high tech in merchandising haircoloring products. It examines new opportunities for development.

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.

The aim of this paper is to advance applied theoretical knowledge on international business (IB) ideation by designing the managing of such ideation as three recursive, multi-competence-enabled systems.

The core principles of Beer’s (1985) Viable System Model are adopted for this system design task. The Viable System Model consists of five interacting sub-systems that can support a viable IB unit.

The contribution of this design of the three recursive, multi-competence-enabled systems will be three novel pieces of the applied theoretical knowledge about recursivity and competences that advance the management of an IB unit as a whole and in particular that of IB ideation.

For future research, I initially propose that the IB ideation (unit) is being managed the more successfully within its focal contexts, the more extensively the IB ideation is designed as a set of three recursive systems enabled by respective multi-competences. Moreover, the 3-system design may serve as the frame of reference for those compatible theorization initiatives vis-à-vis viable IB ideation management that interested competence-based management scholars will conduct in the future.

I put forth the three templates (coupled with Functions 2–3) to facilitate the enhancement of the IB ideation practices among leading, innovative firms and especially by the pioneering management of IB (ideation) units.

Ideation, which is the generation of ideas, is the most crucial step in the early stage of innovation projects. Creativity methods can be applied for ideation purposes. Here, the paper aims to present a concept for combining a multi‐player online game called refQuest with concepts from the Synectics method.

After presenting the two concepts of the refQuest gaming engine and the Synectics method, an approach of how the elements of the gaming engine can be used to implement the Synectics method is shown. Beside this, an initial evaluation of the usefulness of using serious gaming for ideation purposes is given.

It is found that the elements of the Synectics method fit very well with the concepts of the gaming engine of refQuest. A concept for integration could be derived.

The online game refQuest is suitable to support the ideation process. Including concepts from Synectics is possible and would enhance the gaming concept.

Consumers seldom consider end-use consumption (reuse or upcycling) when products reach the end of their lifecycle. This study shows that end-use consumption can be encouraged if individuals are primed to think creatively, engage in end-use ideation (imagine end-use) and become inspired by more original ideas.

Three studies were carried out. Study 1 tested if creativity priming resulted in more effective end-use ideation (greater number of ideas and more original ideas) compared to environmental appeals and no intervention. Study 2 tested the effectiveness of creativity priming in a longitudinal setting. Study 3 demonstrated how creativity priming and end-use ideation could be practically executed using product packaging.

Creativity priming represents an effective intervention to stimulate end-use consumption with particularly positive results amongst less creative consumers. However, it was not the number of generated ideas, but their originality during end-use ideation that triggered inspiration.

This study demonstrates which interventions are more effective in changing consumer behaviour in favour of more sustainable practices.

Increasing environmental degradation requires consumers to change their behaviour by re-consuming products. This study shows that consumers can adopt end-use if they are primed to think creatively, imagine end-use consumption and generate more original ideas.

Creative thinking has been leveraged at product development stages, but not at the end of products’ lifecycle. This study integrated creativity priming, consumer imagination and inspiration theories to explain the underlying mechanism behind end-use consumption to scale up its adoption by consumers.