Value Co-creation and Exploration: The Mediating Roles of Managerial Attention and Initiatives

The involvement of customers, also known as co-creation, is believed to affect the innovation performance of a firm. Indeed, past studies have provided ample support for the positive effects of customer involvement on product quality, innovation speed, and productivity; but the discussions on the effectiveness of co-creation for achieving radical innovations and the drivers of this relationship are less clear. By examining the effects of collaboration with customers on senior managers’ attentiveness and behavior in favor of exploration, we advance the understanding of the link between customer co-creation and radical innovations. Analysis on six case studies and a survey of 131 companies adopting a similar emerging technology indicate a higher probability for exploratory innovation among the companies that co-create with their customers. Our findings further suggest that managerial attention and management innovation are two factors that mediate this relationship