Sustainability innovation by integrating employees: the potential of sustainable embedded lead users

Abstract

Recent studies in innovation management have explored the phenomenon of embedded lead users (ELUs): company employees who exhibit lead user characteristics with regard to a product marketed by their employer (Schweisfurth and Herstatt, 2014). Because they are doubly embedded, i.e., in both producer and user domain, these employees possess specific resources and capabilities which may be beneficial to corporate innovation. While the concept of ELU has been analysed in sports, leisure and healthcare industries, this paper suggests that the phenomenon may also be highly relevant in the context of sustainability innovations. By bringing together existing conceptualisations of a sustainable lead user outside of corporate boundaries and the ELU approach, the concept of sustainable embedded lead users (SELU) is presented. We show why SELU are suited to support corporate sustainability innovations and discuss opportunities and limitations of this approach for (sustainable) innovation and human resource management.