Lead users in product development : a case study about incorporation of lead users in business to business new product development

The purpose of this thesis was to study strategies that companies can use to incorporate business lead users into the new product development process and in this way improve the performance of new product development. We approached this problem by executing two interviews at a company that we knew had a strong customer focus. We interviewed the president and the R&D coordinator of the company. We hoped to be able to draw some conclusions about the usage of lead users in the different stages of the new product development process. However we came to the conclusion that the lead user concept is much more complex than we initially anticipated. Limiting the concept down to only comprise the end user of a product is a vast simplification. We came to the conclusion that the lead user can be a great resource for companies but that this individual may not exist or may not be possible to identify among the users in every field of business. The lead user becomes interesting for market developers because of their product knowledge, knowledge of customer demand and problem solving skills. However we came to the conclusion that these capabilities can be found among others then the end users of the product. Therefore we would like to stretch the lead user concept to be able to include others than the end users or to give the concept a more appropriate name like lead knowledge individuals.Validerat; 20101217 (root