Collaborate to create innovative products and services

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Come not from supplier and customer collaborations, but from customers' customers. While vendors may have demonstrated basic commercial viability of their products, uncertainty remains about what are the best applications and how to realize the potential value. When suppliers and customers work together, they can adapt technology. Relatively small changes can lead to huge value gains for your clients’ customers. Recent research on customer-oriented supplier innovation has focused on how suppliers and customers  with cost savings as the primary goal. Other studies take an outcomes-driven perspective on supply chains, viewing innovation as one outcome among many.

In contrast, our research focuses on innovation processes involving three actors in the value chain (suppliers, their customers, and customers' customers) to understand how outcomes that would not otherwise occur are achieved, which we refer to To adjust supplier's products. (See About Research.) About Research We draw on research into successful and Job Function Email List unsuccessful examples of collaboration and alignment to provide guidance on increasing the chances of success in potentially valuable situations. Our research into management practices over the past three years has repeatedly found that in most cases the potential benefits of collaboration and alignment are not realized. We seek study participants who have recent experience working with customers or suppliers to improve the value of products delivered to their customers.



We identified potential study participants through a variety of channels. First, we participated in the Business Markets Institute New Product Implementation Consortium and provided a brief overview of our anticipated research. Alliance members provided feedback on our proposed research, and we invited interested businesses to participate. About the Author James Anderson is the William Ford Professor of Marketing and Wholesale Distribution at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is also an Owen Gross Distinguished Fellow at Penn State's Institute for Business Markets. is Professor of Management Accounting at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe.