Value Proposition Through Knowledge Sharing and Crowdsourcing

Abstract

A value proposition is important to businesses and their success, because it analyses the needs of customers or users and what they are willing to pay for. This study aims to make explicit the process of integrating/involving the customer/user in the innovation process and of conceptualizing customer value creation, by identifying different perspectives of value and customer/user engagement. Potential ways for gaining added business value through a suitable value proposition based on crowdsourcing are examined. Open innovation is investigated as a tool for integrating customers/users in the innovation process, in particularly in the ideation stage of innovation. Crowdsourcing is a paradigm that assumes that companies can and should use external ideas in addition to internal ideas for creating value and assume that internal ideas can be taken to market by external channels, outside the current business of the company. Online social networks are particularly suitable channels for engaging customers and users for a common goal regarding innovation, problem solving, and efficiency.