End-users as co-developers for novel green products and services – an exploratory case study analysis of the innovation process in incumbent firms

Abstract Studies focusing on green innovation have shown that companies can gain a competitive advantage by collaborating with multiple stakeholders in the innovation process. Since novel green innovations are often systemic in nature and require changes in consumption behavior, end-user integration along the innovation process may be particularly relevant for the success of such products and services. The main aim of this paper is therefore to add to our understanding of the role of users in the green innovation processes of incumbent firms. The comparative case study in the context of e-mobility and smart housing outlines the methods used by three European incumbent firms to integrate users at different stages of the innovation process as well as their motivation and benefit. The findings show that users were basically co-developing the novel green product or service from the beginning. In the cases under review, early and constant end-user integration served as a risk-management tool, since it uncovered behavioral changes induced by the innovations among potential future users. This helped companies to overcome risk aversion towards the development of genuinely new green products and services and to bring these to the market. Field trials similar to living labs proved to be of particular importance for gaining insight into the everyday lifestyle of users. Thereby, the paper stresses an approach to green innovation in incumbent firms, which has not been given much attention in literature before. In addition, our cases show that the benefits of user integration can not only be high for rather incremental green innovations but also for genuinely new innovation in highly technological industries. User integration helped the case companies to uncover behavioral changes in the consumption phase and strengthening market acceptance. We conclude that firms may profit from an extensive user input throughout all phases of the innovation process to develop novel green products and services, and call for further research on how firms can overcome entry barriers to user integration in green product development in the future.