Back to Search
Start Over
Collaborative relationships with customers: generation and protection of innovations
- Source :
- Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación, instname
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Emerald, 2017.
-
Abstract
- Purpose This paper aims to discover the key elements for generating and protecting innovations based on the customer-supplier relationship in industrial sectors. Design/methodology/approach This exploratory qualitative study was performed using semi-structured interviews with chief executive officers and innovation managers of 22 industrial firms and institutions from the machine-tool industry. Findings Key forms of knowledge must be shared by the two agents. Producers have to obtain in-depth knowledge about customers’ needs and customers need knowledge on producer’s absorptive capacity. Producers distinguish between three types of customers: reference customers, necessary for innovations with greatest scope, clientes amigos or test users, required to test innovations currently being developed, and traditional customers, associated with incremental innovations. The traditional means of protecting innovations is a detailed contract between customer and supplier; and patents are used for innovations of greater technological scope, as a form of defense against third-party patents and as a signaling element of absorptive capacity. Originality/value The paper draws on the direct experience of executives from companies whose innovation is based on a close relationship with customers to answer questions to which the literature has yet to provide definitive answers: What sort of information to be shared is relevant for the generation of innovations? Are all customers equal or are there profiles that contribute more effectively to the development of innovations? What attitude and mechanisms are most effective for protecting the knowledge and competitiveness generated through knowledge sharing?
- Subjects :
- Marketing
Value (ethics)
Scope (project management)
media_common.quotation_subject
05 social sciences
absorptive capacity
innovation protection
Knowledge sharing
buyer-seller relationships
Absorptive capacity
Originality
0502 economics and business
050211 marketing
Business
types of customers
Business and International Management
Direct experience
Element (criminal law)
050203 business & management
Qualitative research
media_common
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación, instname
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....f37daea031aab972d6a5b6fdc337a992