Summary

This book deals with how companies can involve customers or users in order to learn with them in the field of service-based business development. It presents a variety of customer-involvement approaches, methods for learning with customers, and the results of case studies conducted in both service and manufacturing companies focusing on value-creation through services.Based on research carried out by several research groups around the world, as well as on illustrative cases, the book creates new actionable knowledge regarding customer-involvement which will be useful for both practitioners and scholars.Benefits for readers include: an understanding of the business potential of learning with customers and other users; an overview of the fields of new service development and customer-involvement with regard to concepts, theoretical frameworks, and models, in addition to strategies and techniques for involving users in fruitful ways during the innovation process; an illustration of the cases based on the results of empirical studies; and managerial implications and guidelines regarding how to manage customer-involvement during the different phases of the new service and business development process.