مدیریت ریسک در یکپارچه سازی مشتری

The necessity and the advantages of integrating customers into the innovation process are widely recognized. There are, however, inherent risks to customer integration that can be reduced by comprehensive risk management methods. Based on intensive desk research and in-depth workshops with nine companies, this article provides a detailed description of the various risks and offers advice on how to minimize them. Diverse risk management methods theoretical backgrounds are introduced, while examples from companies that have had vast experience with all aspects of customer integration illustrate their practical applicability.

Customer integration into the innovation process is about to become best practice. Empirical studies have established that customer integration increases a company’s potential for innovation (Urban and von Hippel, 1988). Among its many advantages are: early customer integration leads to a stronger relationship with the partner, a better understanding of market needs, fewer errors in the early development process, and a better product quality. These advantages do not only apply to the innovation process’s macrolevel but also to the microlevel. Customers can provide first-hand information regarding their needs, can help create innovative ideas for new products, and provide feedback regarding concepts and prototypes (Bruce and Biemans, 1995). When customer integration is considered, one should remember that customers are not only end-consumers but can be found along the whole value chain. The question of how to integrate customers has been widely discussed. Various concepts have been developed and are being tried out. Best known are von Hippel’s lead user approach (von Hippel, 1986) according to which trendsetting customers are identified and integrated, the empathic design method (Leonard and Rayport, 1997) which examines customers’ use of existing products and analyzes their behavior, and, most recently, the IT-based virtual customer integration (Dahan and Hauser, 2002) which makes use of customers’ ideas with the aid of purpose-designed toolkits and online communities. Whereas the positive aspects of customer integration and its implementation in the innovation process are a focus of scientific interest, the negative sides have so far met with little attention. However, the inherent risks should not be neglected: the company’s loss of know-how to the customer, the company’s dependence on customers, and the company being limited to only incremental innovations, are just a few of these risks. The consequences of these risks are, however, wide ranging: from financial disaster through investment in the wrong product, to supplying a competitor with know-how via a disloyal integrated customer. The indisputable risks of customer integration have to be weighed carefully against its established advantages, but should not lead to abandoning the concept altogether. An intelligent risk management can minimize the dangers. This article will focus on this minimization.

The integration of customers into the innovation process has many advantages, but also holds definite risks: loss of know-how, dependence on customers, being limited to mere incremental innovations and niche markets, and misunderstandings (see the summary of risks and risk reducing activities in Figure 4). Full-size image (92 K) Figure 4. Summarizing Activities Minimizing the Risks of Customer Integration Figure options These, however, are less important than the risk of not integrating customers at all, which will result in no market-driven products being produced and with the products’ features not being valued or appreciated. Furthermore, the imperative of integrating customers is underlined by the danger of a bigger market risk through the lack of reference customers, an increase in R&D costs through changes in products’ features and the unnecessary limitation of innovative power as a result of not using an important source of innovation. The balance in favor of customer integration must not lead to the inherent risks simply being accepted, but to managing them efficiently. Risk management should become an integral part of the overall innovation management. Depending on the specific risks, specific measures for minimizing them are at managers’ disposal: ❖ The selection of the right customers (preferably lead users) to be integrated, ❖ The choice of the right methods of integration, ❖ The choice of the right time and place for integrating customers into the innovation process, ❖ The provision of the right prevailing conditions (IP management, staff management, incentive systems among other things), and ❖ The choice of the right project in which the integration of customers creates a genuine added value. Whereas future research on more refined and comprehensive methods is necessary, the measures for minimizing the risks of customer integration as described in this article should provide sufficient initial protection and encourage companies to tackle the required customer integration even more vigorously.