Many companies have learned to use the Internet as a powerful platform for collaborating with customers on innovation. They have created customer advisory panels to solicit ideas for new products, fostered online communities to encourage dialogue among customers, and built toolkits that enable customers and engineers to codesign products. By allowing businesses to greatly expand their reach while maintaining the richness of their interactions, the Internet allows them to make customers active participants in the innovation process.1
But direct interactions with customers, while necessary to facilitate innovation, are not enough. Direct channels of communication have several limitations. For one thing, companies may not be able to reach the right customers, because their interactions and perspectives tend to be limited to the markets they already serve. For another, they may find it difficult to reach people at the right time, because customers tend to interact with companies at relatively late stages of the decision-making process. And they may also find it difficult to engage customers in the right context, because customers rarely carry on conversations about their lifestyles and interests on company Web sites.
To fully exploit the Internet as an enabler of innovation, companies need to complement their direct channels of customer interaction with indirect, or mediated, interactions. Those points of contact can be carried out by third parties that function as “knowledge... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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