Product Development in Start-ups. a case study of the relationships created through the product development process

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine the intersection between the start-up methodology, co-development and the customer perspective. Co-development is an area with many aspects; this research will focus on the relationship between the company and its customer. By doing so, an understanding of which are the most important factors of new product development can be formed. Research question: RQ1: How does the customer involvement affect the product development process? RQ2: How does the stage of the development process where the customer gets involved affect the co-development? Method: Due to the nature of the research questions a qualitative research method was chosen with an inductive strategy. The research has been designed as a comparative case study were three case companies as well as two customer of each company have been interviewed. The interviews were semi-structured in order to capture the similarities and differences between the participants. Findings: The research suggests that by involving the right customers in the product development process the value can be increased and it can result in new clients. Involving a customer does not necessarily have the same impact. Instead it might result in valuable resources being misused. The research further implies that involving the customer in the early is related to positive outcome in many aspects