In this article, the authors propose that the canonical customer-toolkit dyad in mass customization (MC) should be complemented with user communities. Many companies in various industries have begun to offer their customers the opportunity to design their own products online. The companies...

Many services can be self-provided. An individual user or a user firm can, for example, choose to do its own accounting – choose to self-provide that service - instead of hiring an accounting firm to provide it. Since users can ‘serve themselves’ in many cases, it is also possible for...

A detailed survey of 498 high technology small and medium-sized enterprises in the Netherlands shows process innovation by user firms to be common practice. Fifty-four percent of these firms reported developing entirely novel process equipment or software for their own use and/or modifying...

Die mit Hilfe einer Conjoint-Analyse bei Personalmitarbeitern identifizierten "High-Potentials" unter den BWL-Studenten zeichnen sich im empirischen Portrait durch durchgehend beeindruckende Qualifikationen aus, was Noten sowie praxis- und außeruniversitäres Engagement angeht. Aufgrund ihrer...

This study contributes to our understanding of the innovation process by bringing attention to and investigating the process by which innovators outside of firms obtain innovation-related resources and assistance. This study is the first to explicitly examine how user-innovators gather the...

The quest for the "success factors" that drive a company's innovation performance has attracted a great deal of attention among both practitioners and academics. The underlying assumption is that certain critical activities impact the innovation performance of the company or the project....