Part I – Introduction

Abstract

Creating and designing products together with customers is not a new phenomenon in innovation research. Already in the early 1970s, researchers such as Nigel Cross have called for major rethinking and more customer integration in product design processes. Formerly discussed as participatory design (Cross, 1972), it has gained heavy interest almost half a century later in both innovation research and practice referred to as customer co-creation (Gemser & Perks, 2015; Mustak, Jaakkola, & Halinen, 2013; Piller, Ihl, & Vossen, 2010; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004a).