Changing Boundaries: Tow Ards A Multidisciplinary Approach To User Innovation, Customer Feedback And Organizational Learning

Abstract

While innovation has been the core theme what with firms seeking to progress and compete effectively, researchers and academicians for their part have typically studied it from the perspective of the fim1. So, literature has focused on innovations originating from the firms themselves. Herc a plethora of inter-related topics have been studied. Witness partnership roles which lead to firms becoming more innovative (Zhang, Shu, Jiang, Xu, & Alan J, 20 I 0), the positive effects of collaboration on the innovative behaviour of firms (Sawang & Matthews, 20 I 0), internal characteristics of firms who manage innovation (Waal, Anton, Maritz,Alex, Shieh & Chich, 2010), identifying and exploiting a larger number of knowledge sources for successful innovation (Leiponen & Helfat, 2010) and the moderating role of innovation in the firms' performance linked to corporate social performance (Hull & Rothenberg, 2008). In a similar vein, the impact of innovation on a firm's perfom1ance has also attracted a large set of researchers. In this area, studies have typically focused on the impact of innovation on a firm's value and risk (Sorescu & Spanjol, 2008), the study of knowledge, innovation and their impact on firm performance (Thornill, 2006; Darroch, 2005; Loof & Heshmati, 2002) and the impact of dynamic capabilities on a firm's performance in terms of process innovations (Zott, 2003).