The course „Customer-Centric Innovation” provides an introduction to customer-centric product development.

This includes the understanding of the intellectual foundations, the underlying methodology, and the mindset necessary to develop innovations from a customer’s perspective.

As part of this course, the students have the opportunity to become familiar with innovation methods relevant in practice and apply them in a university related context. During the course, the students develop a customer-centric innovation in groups and learn how to translate an idea into a real market test.

Classroom sessions comprise a mixture of classical lectures (theory foundations), innovation development (application), and presentations.

The students
• understand the fundamental purpose of customer-centric innovation,
• comprehend the relevance of customer needs for new product development,
• familiarize with and apply state-of-the-art methods for customer-centric innovation,
• can derive innovative ideas and reflect upon them.

1. Toolkits for Innovation: How Digital Technologies Empower Users in New Product Development (with T. Schäper and J.N. Foege), R&D Management, Vol. 54 (2024), 95-117.
2. Algorithm-driven Search: An Attention-based View on Artificial Intelligence for Organizational Exploitation and Exploration (with A. Eicke and C. Sabel), Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2022.
3. Simply Clever – The Impact of Cognitive Simplicity on Organizational Digital Strategy Orientation (with D. Lohmar and C. Jung). Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2021.
4. Determinants of Idea Sharing in Crowdsourcing: Evidence from the Automotive Industry (with T. Schäper, N. Foege and S. Schäfer), R&D Management, Vol. 51 (2021), 101-113.