Enabling SME user-driven service innovation through virtual worlds
Year: 2009
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: New services creation has become easier to attain, thanks to the Internet providing a very fertile ground for entrepreneurship with short development times and low entrance barriers. A cornerstone for successful services is the entrepreneur’s ability to anticipate and fulfil users’ needs. However, innovation is complex and characterized by a high failure rate because fulfilling customers ’ needs is challenging. Therefore, both theory and practice recommend collaborating with customers for the creation of new products and the Internet has greatly facilitated this process of customer integration. Recent developments within virtual worlds offer unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurs to tap into the innovative potential of consumers and consumer communities for new service creation. Inspired by avatar-based innovation and drawing upon theories of user-driven innovation as well as service innovation, our aim is to shed light on the opportunities and challenges that virtual worlds provide, especially for SMEs. Using a design research approach, we developed a user-driven service innovation workshop within the virtual world of Second Life. We collaborated with RunAlong.se, a Swedish start-up developing a web community for joggers, entirely designed through a user-driven innovation approach based on a series of
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2135118975