User Driven Innovation (Investigating the ways to involve users at local companies)

Abstract: ABSTRACT Keywords: Users, Innovation, User driven innovation, Design, Mobile, Products/services, benefits. User driven innovation helps companies to compete in a global market by developing what the customers or end users want. So users are considered as a resource for companies developing mobile products/services because user driven innovation process is mainly carried out by the end users or user firms/partner companies. The companies perceive the needs and wishes of the users through their involvement in idea creation, design, development and feedback. Mobile companies involve users in their innovation process in different phases but they have no standard guidelines regarding which type of users to be involved in which phases of the innovation process. This thesis work is aimed at filling this research gap. Qualitative research methodology was used to carry on this research work. The literature review provided the current status of research in the problem domain. Then industrial and academic interviews were conducted on the basis of the findings of the literature review. Finally, a short survey was conducted in mobile companies to validate our findings from literature review and interviews. There are major four phases of the innovation process: Exploration, Idea creation, Idea selection and Commercialization. We identified four types of users to be involved in the innovation process i.e. Ordinary end users, corporate users/partner companies, and professional/expert users and lead users. Mobile companies should involve users in different innovation phases of the innovation process by using different methods like diary search, explorative interviews, workshops, market test and field tests. So it is beneficial to involve different types of users in phases of the innovation process by using different methods.