August 3, 2011
School of Business, Kochi
“Customer driven innovation is fundamental to productivity and success of a firm” stated Sandhya G., Amrita School of Business Kochi.
Sandhya was at Singapore presenting a paper titled Customer Driven Innovation – A Conceptual Model at the 12th International Conference of the Society for Global Business & Economic Development, July 21-23, 2011.
The paper described a Customer Innovation Eco-System, presenting a generalized conceptual model for analysis and management with an integrated adaptive pricing approach.
The other authors of the paper included Amin Aloysius Ajab, Professor of Economics, Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research and Dilbar Gimranova, also from the same institution.
The authors defined customer-driven innovation as a set of processes for facilitating design and creation of improvements, enhancements and value-additions to the product/service by the customer.
“In customer-driven innovations, the customers and the firm work together to create and design the innovation but the customer is the key player in this working relationship,” specified Sandhya at the conference.
“The interaction is dynamic, with appropriate mechanisms to support the interaction,” she added.
How could taking care of customer needs relate to adaptive pricing?
“By holding customers to the product and the firm, the firm can have a dominant role in setting the price,” the authors explained. “If a firm is able to expand its customer base and sustain customer loyalty then the demand elasticity can become less.”
Elasticity of demand is defined as the percentage change in quantity demanded caused by a percent change in price. The goal is to minimize the elasticity of demand to the extent possible.
The paper was also co-authored by Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, Dean, Amrita School of Business. At the conference, he was nominated to the Board of the Society for Global Business & Economic Development, that organized this conference.
As part of the Board, Dr. Kalyanaram will help facilitate the Society’s Research Workshops, Doctoral Consortium and Journals.
