Enhancing the selection of methods for customer integration in innovation processes through a process-oriented description framework

Basic aim of innovating is to provide products and solutions meeting the expectations and needs of their customers and stakeholders. Therefore, customer integration methods provide means to integrate these actors into the innovation process for gathering information, supporting in decision making or creating and elaborating ideas or solutions. One central aspect in this regard is the selection of the most appropriate method for a specific task in the innovation process. This is due to, on the one hand, the variety of objectives and potentials for information generation of these methods, and, on the other hand, the diversity of influence factors, restrictions as well as issues for preparation and post-processing of these methods. Therefore we propose a framework with relevant criteria and parameters for describing methods of customer integration from a process-oriented point of view. This framework supports designers and process owners with the selection, preparation and postprocessing of appropriate methods.