User involvement in the innovation process: Development of a framework for e-services

This paper focuses on user involvement in the innovation process in the area of services and especially e-services, a highly unexplored topic. Our research is built on a comprehensive review of the resource-based view, customer/user integration and e-services. A qualitative investigation is performed to explore the situation concerning user involvement in several different companies offering e-services. Based on our findings and previous research a framework for analyzing existing involvement activities and for the generation of new forms of user involvement in the innovation process is developed. The framework consists out of six dimensions and also takes into account internal and external factors affecting the company's innovation activities.