Matching co-innovation project types to diverse customer relationships : perspective of an industrial technology supplier

Abstract

<div lang="en" class="abs"><p class="abs_header">Abstract</p><p>Co-innovation between suppliers and their customers provides important benefits but is not without challenges. Especially in technologically complex industrial context co-innovation projects need careful planning and preparing. Through eight cases, this qualitative study takes the perspective of the supplier and empirically identifies three types of supplier-customer co-innovation projects and for each project type, the supplier’s co-innovation goal, potential matching customer relationships, and related managerial benefits and challenges are described. The results contribute to the co-innovation research by presenting a framework for matching supplier’s co-innovation goals to customer relationship types, which brings out the variety of co-innovation projects that even a single supplier can face and must manage.</p></div>