CHAPTER 5

Customers as Cocreators in Service Innovation

The more you engage with customers, the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.

—John Russell, Chairman of Harley Davidson

... the role of the customer is essentially that of a respondent: speaking only when spoken to.

—Eric von Hippel, Professor at MIT

This chapter covers customers taking active roles in service innovation. The most pertinent example of active customers is lead users. Lead users take matters into their own hands and innovate what they are most in need of. Lead users are identified as those who stand to most benefit from product advances, but are often identified by the fact that they are already innovating. Customer involvement ...

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