Читать книгу Innovation Economics, Engineering and Management Handbook 1 - Группа авторов - Страница 27

According to Schumpeter, innovation is the first commercial transaction of an invention. In other words, a customer is willing to invest resources in the invention. Essentially, this means that this client identifies the value of this invention in relation to a use that is specific to them. Then, the organization has to propose an attractive value for the client. Up until the mid-2000s, the consumer remained “at the end of the chain”; this meant that this value had to be anticipated and identified at the beginning of the innovation process, with a high risk of going wrong. Since then, the consumer’s position has evolved, and they are now involved in the co-creation of the product, participating in its promotion and dissemination (Cova and Cova 2009). In this sense, marketing research emphasizes how essential it is to integrate the consumer from the beginning of the process, which facilitates the identification and proposal of a particular value.

This is referred to as “consumer empowerment” (Fayn et al. 2019). This “delegation of power to the consumer” can be initiated by the organization itself in a “top-down” movement. In this case, it leaves the consumer free to choose certain technical or aesthetic characteristics, it includes them in the creation of the product, in its promotion and distribution (Cova and Cova 2009; Piligrimiene et al. 2015). The consumer is in a partnership relationship with the company. By contrast, this delegation of power can be more of a “power grab” by the consumer, who, for example, via comments on social networks, can direct consumption. It is more of a liberation according to a “bottom-up” movement, which can express an assertion of counter-power on the part of consumers in the face of traditional consumption, or even a civic commitment to more sustainable and democratic structures (Papaoikonomou and Alarcón 2015).

According to the two movements mentioned, consumer empowerment does not imply exactly the same notions in marketing (Fayn et al. 2019), which consequently influences work in innovation management. In the case of the “top-down” movement, it is a question of relational marketing (establishment of lasting relationships with the consumer) or marketing knowledge (mobilization and development of customer skills), whereas in the case of the “bottom-up” movement, it is more the notions of consumerism (or consumer resistance) or engagement (involvement of the customer beyond the transaction). However, the notion of brand community (a group of customers attached to the same brand values) is present in both, knowing that the “bottom-up” movement is favored by information and communication technologies, and, more broadly, by digital technology. Indeed, social media, evaluation platforms and online petitions reinforce the power of the consumer in the face of the organization (Fleck and Ambroise 2019). Ignoring this becomes impossible and, above all, a strategic error with serious consequences.

One of the challenges facing contemporary organizations concerns the ways in which innovation is appropriated by these creative, committed, even critical consumers, in the face of consumer society, by these consumers capable of expressing a counter-power without the limits of time and space via digital technology. It is true that organizations have always benefited from consumers’ good ideas, and research has already explored many ways of doing so, such as listening to customers via Web 2.0. (Viot 2010), design thinking approaches (Brown 2009) or crowdsourcing (Pénin and Burger-Helmchen 2012). However, given the intensity of these issues and the growing power of consumer criticism of the capitalist economy, it is essential to pursue these investigations in innovation management and reflect on the most relevant modalities, according to the type of consumer empowerment, in particular. This therefore questions the appropriation of innovation by the members of the organization.