Collaborative innovation: an open approach in the development of new products

Abstract

The strategies adopted by companies seeking to foster technological innovations in products and services have been changing significantly in the last years. One of the elements of notable evolution is related with the way companies conduct the research & development (R&D) of new products, services, processes and business models. The present article aimed to identify practices of collaborative innovation that have been used in the development of new products and elected a case from the automotive industry as its empirical field. Even though this industry has experienced the development of R&D together with its suppliers, co-creating value with end-users is new. The unity of analysis was the development project of Fiat Mio – Fiat Concept Car III (FCCIII) and the results showed that, during the FCCIII’s development process, different practices of collaborative innovation were adopted, which provided the focal organization with access to a different pool of knowledge, external to its boundaries.