Paper info

The role of the first customers in radical innovations : the software case.

Florence Charue-Duboc, FrançoisJJ Scheid and Robert Salle

The paper was published at the 25th IMP-conference in Marseille, France in 2009.

 This paper is about the role and the involvement of the customer in the development of radical software innovation. Von Hippel and Katz (2002) consider that the customers play a decisive role in the emergence and direction that the innovation takes. More specifically, in software innovation, it is taking the customers' needs into consideration that seems critical (Cusumano 2004). Fichman and Kemerer (1997) suggest involving the users in the phases prior to the conception and development of the innovations. Based on two case studies (PressPro project and Exinis project) we propose a classification of 4 different roles played by members within the customer organisation: Innovation Architect, Project Manager, Expert Users, Users.