New product co-creation through practice-based innovation: a case study

In an increasingly competitive environment which facilitates rapid changes in consumers' preferences and needs, an organization's ability to acquire and exploit knowledge is of vital. Hence, through continuous interaction with both users and external stakeholders, an organization should be able to simultaneously utilise the knowledge obtained through everyday work experiences (practice-based), and knowledge updated by research advances (research-based), to remain connected with the market's needs and trends. Practice-based knowledge enables organizations to draw stimulus from information collected by employees through interactions with stakeholders and clients during their everyday working practice. Recently, social product development (SPD) has received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners who have acknowledged it to be a new, and more efficient route through which to improve products through the optimization of the knowledge acquisition process. As part of the SPD approach, organizations must rely on what has been termed 'mass collaboration'