Aging populations challenge companies across different countries and industries to respond to the changing needs, demands and expectations of their growing shares of older customers. This opens room for improving or developing innovations – products as well as services – that correspond to...

Aging populations challenge companies across different countries and industries to respond to the changing needs, demands and expectations of their growing shares of older customers. This opens room for improving or developing innovations - products as well as services - that correspond to the...

Unternehmen, die Produkte der nächsten Generation entwickeln, stehen oft vor folgendem Problem: Orientieren sie ihre Entwicklung zu stark an den heutigen Kunden und Anwendern, resultieren oft nur kleine Innovationen ("inkrementale Innovation"). Lösen Sie sich hingegen von diesen Anwendern,...

"Strong market orientation is essential for innovation success!" Although both academics and market research practitioners would generally accept this statement, alignment with the needs of the customer often results in conservative innovation strategies. Due to their focus on what is currently...

Lead User führen Bedarfstrends an und liefern dabei nicht nur Informationen zur Frage, was benötigt wird, sondern auch wie Lösungen umgesetzt werden können. Diese Lösungsinformationen sind im Innovationprozess von sehr großem Wert für ein Unternehmen, insbesondere wenn sie Monate oder...

In der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Innovationsmanagement - wie in der betrieblichen Praxis der Neuproduktentwicklung - wird der Einsatz von innovativen Analogien als ein vielversprechender Ansatz gesehen, denn hierdurch kann bereits bestehendes Wissen zur Lösung von Problemstellungen, die...

High-tech, German companies are facing a curious problem: their products are reportedly too good for the expanding global markets. So in a way they get penalised for offering a superlative quality. At a second glance, though, this doesn't seem surprising. For, succeeding in the emerging markets...

Within this paper we examine the strategic perspective of the emerging phenomenon of performance-oriented systems (e.g. car-sharing, cloud computing). Based on twenty-seven system examples from four industries, we derive six founding propositions that delineate their strategic characteristics...

Integrating lead users into the product development process is a promising source of innovations. While the lead user approach is clearly established in academia, the implementation into management practice is ambiguous. Conducting a literature review of 255 articles in business press we show...

In the light of depleting natural resources and growing awareness for responsible consumption, Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) has emerged as one of the key concepts redefining product characteristics and assigning a new role to environmental responsibility of companies. It reframes the general goal of...