علی اصغر ملایی

Ever-increasing developments in business environment, rapid changes in markets and increase of competitiveness have made the role of innovation to be highlighted in economic growth and development process of organizations and to create competitive advantage for them more than the past. An important part of the company research in innovation process always involves generating new ideas that have commercial capability. In order to generate new and innovative ideas, the perspectives towards new product must be extended. Integration of various customers in the early stages of the innovation process-it is called the front-end of innovation (FEI) - can lead to innovation success and creativity increase. As a result, in this paper by reviewing literature, we present a new model of customer-based innovation through synthesis and development of valid models, which by focusing on front-end of innovation, it integrates simultaneously the customers of competitor companies, and customers of other industries (marginal ones) in addition to the customers of the company, in order to generate creative ideas about new product. On the other hand, using such an approach will not be possible without openness capability and applying the open innovation paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to design a systematic model so that managers can enter the next steps of innovation process with confidence about new product success in front-end of innovation.

Innovation is a key element for the success of companies in a competitive environment. Innovations begin with innovative ideas that form in the early stages of the innovation process, called the front-end of innovation (FEI). Therefore, to access information from different sources, especially external sources, the early activities of the innovation process should be organized as a systematic approach. Customers are as the most important source of innovative ideas in new product process that companies can use them. To benefit from the idea of customers, there needs to be a model for integrating them with internal organization resources. In this paper, a model is presented for integration of customers derived from open innovation paradigm in the FEI based on simultaneous integration of customers, competitors, fringe industries in order to Increase creativity and innovation success. This proposed model is obtained by development of Ulwick’s model that implemented in Agricultural implements industry for “drip irrigation system”. The main objective of this paper is to generate innovative product ideas and then selection of more innovative idea (real and unmet need) of customers in the FEI phase by proposed model, in order to reduce the failure rate of new products in the market. Data were obtained from a survey of 30 customers, as a research sample. The results suggest that opening the FEI phase and the subsequent integration of different customers in this phase, in order to generate innovative ideas, will have a positive impact on the success of the new product.