A framework to evaluate customer knowledge cocreation capacity for new product development

Today more than ever, organizations have realized a strong partner for innovation called customer. In fact, the increasing change in demands of customers and higher competitiveness of the market has made the organizations search for the sources of gaining competitive advantage not in themselves but rather in consumers. Customer knowledge is what the organizations need to be successful in innovation and development of new products and services. But customer knowledge does not exist as a prepared package and organizations need to create the required knowledge through mechanisms in collaboration with customers. This collaboration is a process that is referred to, in literature as, "knowledge co-creation" and by introducing the concept of knowledge co-creation capacity of the organization, the present study is trying to recommend a framework to consolidate the concepts presented regarding collaboration with the customer in creating knowledge and also designing a scale to measure the knowledge co-creation capacity of organizations in collaboration with customers to innovate and develop new products.

Knowledge co-creation, new product development, organizational capability, factor analysis.