Customer-Centric Open R&D and Innovation in the Telecommunication Industry

It is widely acknowledged that users are important actors in innovation projects: the market success of new products and services depends highly on addressing customer requirements without overloading them with too many new features and technologies (Lettl/Gemünden 2005; Mason/Harris 2005). Going beyond traditional market research and integrating customers intensively into the innovation process is suggested to be an important measure to market-oriented innovation management (Ernst 2002; Iansiti/Clark 1994). This paper describes a customer-centric open R&D and innovation concept called user-driven innovation, and how it is applied within a multi-national telecommunication company. Userdriven innovation is based on customer-and innovation research tools tailored to four innovation phases: exploration (e.g., dayin-thelife visits), ideation (e.g., lead-user workshops), selection/execution (e.g., user clinics) and commercialization (e.g., test market simulation). The application of a variety of these “intelligent” user-driven innovation tools guarantees a phase-specific, integrated customer-centric open innovation approach. This paper will give a methodological overview and examples based on the case study of interactive mobile TV (IMTV).