What and how about customer-driven product development

Collaborative product development is of increasing interest as customer demands increases while product life cycles decrease. This study investigates how suppliers handle active customers including managing customer requests for new products and customer-driven product development. A large structured literature review of the top 20 supply chain management journals is conducted to explore existing literature. Research states the importance of active integration in product development, but does not provide answers to how suppliers can manage this in practice. A 2x2 matrix is developed describing the differing views on customers in existing research including customer actions on both new and existing products.