Successful Consumer Co-Creation: The case of Nivea Body Care
Volker Bilgram and Dr. Michael BartlHYVE AG
Dr. Stefan BielBeiersdorf AG
INTRODUCTION
Companies with superior R&D units have traditionally been technology-driven innovation leaders. Since the turn of the millennium, however, many of these companies have undergone a radical change in innovation strategy by opening up their innovation processes to external stakeholders (Chesbrough 2003; von Hippel et al. 1999; Sakkab 2002). “Picking a man of genius, giving him money, and leaving him alone” (Conan 2002) had long been the managerial maxim in the heyday of internal R&D excellence,...