An exploratory investigation of collective intelligence in new product development on the telecommunication industry

Abstract

To remain competitive in rapidly changing market, companies continuously try to make new products or services that reflect customer's needs. Recently, many studies have highlighted the use of collective intelligence based on advanced information communication technologies and emphasized the importance of collective intelligence or user involvement for improving novelty and customer value of NPD (New Product Development). This study aims at investigating the present condition and effectiveness of collective intelligence on the telecommunication industry by conducting in-depth interviews and surveys with professional teams of three major telecommunication service providers in South Korea related to new product development. The result indicates two followers utilize `lead users' in NPD at the same level of general employees but not leading company. And utilization degree of ordinary users is lower than others in all three companies. Also, some results that degree of novelty and customer benefit of lead users is higher than those of general employees and lower in terms of feasibility support previous studies. This study goes further in terms of revealing the difference of utilization degree of collective intelligence between two kinds of NPDs, existing product improvement and developing completely new products. In addition, we find collective intelligence is more effective in terms of product divergence, quality improvement, existing product replacement than cost reduction, market share increase and profitability improvement. And finally it is identified that organization's open culture is very important factor for revitalization of collective intelligence as well as motivational program, company policy/process and IT System. We conclude by considering some contribution of our key findings for collective intelligence in NPD on the Korea telecommunication industry and direct further study.