Value Creating Logic of Customer-Driven Product Development

This paper focuses on how companies on business-to-business markets, characterized by complex customer problems, organize and manage the interaction process as part of the management of customer requests for new products. More specifically it is investigated how the intra-organizational activities part of the problem solving process is configured, when taking the customer supplier interaction into consideration. The research takes an inter-and intra-organizational perspective by focusing on the dyad between a buyer and supplier. A single case study is applied in order to investigate the relationship between customer problems of high complexity and the organization of activities in the buyer-supplier interaction process. Building on value configuration theory and theory of problem complexity this research contributes to widen our understanding of how marketing and problem solving processes are organized, when customer supplier interaction concerns complex problem solving.