Customer Development for Start-ups: What is the State of the Art and Which Current and Future Part Does IT Play?

Latest studies found that an insufficient customer focus when developing business ideas represents a crucial factor in the failing of start-ups. That is why different concepts to early involve customers are being discussed in the literature more often recently. These concepts aim at including customers in the development and testing of new business ideas from the beginning. With the terms customer development and lean start-up, the literature currently describes different activities that exhibit certain interdependencies. Therefore, this paper aims at analysing these activities and depicting them in a holistic customer development process for the first time, hence allowing for a topical overview of the these concepts. Moreover, this paper shows which IT solutions for the IT support of particular process steps are provided in practice. Based on the insights gathered from this research, this paper also demonstrates important areas for future research in the field of “IT support for customer development.”