2. Theoretical Framework & Methodology This chapter defines the theoretical concepts used in this article in paragraph 2.1. The methodology applied in this article is reflected in paragraph 2.2.
2.1.
Theoretical Framework
Innovation An innovation is not an invention. An invention only becomes an innovation if it has passed through production and marketing tasks and is diffused to the market place (Trott, 2002). Thus the discovery should go further from the lab to production and will also add economic value to a company and is diffused to others than the discoverers (Garcia & Calantone, 2001). Latent customer needs A customer is the end-user of a product or service. This can be existing customers or new customers to an organization. In B2B settings this often means that the focus is not on the buying customer, but on their customer or end-user. Latent needs are the needs of customers that are currently implicit, unarticulated or hidden for the customer and the researcher. The customer is either not aware of the need or is not willing to share this need. Discover stage Identifying latent customer needs is a typical activity for the first stage of an innovation process (as depicted figure 1). It is an activity that leaves room for divergent thinking to understand the ture problems and needs of a customer.
Figure 1: The four phases of an innovation process: the latent need discovery takes place in the discover stage.
Customer focused innovation In customer driven innovation, there are many approaches that are being used and they can be categorized in three different types (Desouza et al, 2008):
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