Options
Embedded lead users - the benefits of employing users for corporate innovation
Publikationstyp
Journal Article
Date Issued
2014-10-16
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Journal
Volume
44
Issue
1
Start Page
168
End Page
180
Citation
Research Policy 44 (1): 168-180 (2015-02-01)
Publisher DOI
Scopus ID
Publisher
Elsevier
While most of the literature views users and producers as organizationally distinct, this paper studies users within producer firms. We define "embedded lead users" (ELUs) as employees who are lead users of their employing firm's products or services. We argue that ELUs benefit from dual embeddedness in the user and producer domains; it shapes their cognitive structure and enables them to better absorb sticky need knowledge from the user domain. We hypothesize that ELUs are more active than regular employees in acquiring, disseminating, and utilizing market need information for corporate innovation. Using survey data from the mountaineering equipment industry (n = 149), we test and support our hypotheses. Additional robustness checks reveal that the observed effects are indeed due to lead userness rather than to affective product involvement or job satisfaction. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications, as well as directions for future research on this empirically important but hitherto under-researched phenomenon.
Subjects
Embedded lead users
Market information processing
Organizational behavior
Organizational boundaries
Sticky knowledge
User innovation
DDC Class
330: Wirtschaft
Funding Organisations
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
More Funding Information
We gratefully acknowledge thesupport of this research project by Deutsche Forschungsgemein-schaft (DFG, project RA 1798/3-1).