Before we move on to a more detailed presentation of the different ways of involving users and the related management practices, we need to distinguish between the specific motivations and needs of users and customers. In line with the volume's focus on industrial players, the description primarily applies to them, but it can also be applied to other economic sectors. First of all, it should be noted that in an industrial environment, users are generally not individuals, but small and large enterprises whose suppliers are working on a number of innovative solutions. On the other hand, due to their nature and their role in the supply chain, suppliers maintain close relationships with their customers. In many cases, they supply a few dominant customers, so their revenue depends to a large extent on their end-product manufacturing customers, mostly OEMs. It should also be noted that the developments of supplier companies are determined by a small number of customers. Thirdly, end users do not make purchasing decisions themselves, but make recommendations to the purchasing organisation, typically the management of an OEM. Consequently, we can say that users are typically employees of a customer organisation or customers of the customer organisation who work with the product being developed on a daily basis.

 

 

The experiences of company interviews conducted by Abrell et al. (2018) highlight that gathering knowledge and experiences from users is by no means an easy task, as these are often mixed with the user's feelings and subjective views. Similarly, gathering knowledge from customers is not easy either, as we are not talking about individuals, but communities of professionals who may have diverse opinions. In any case, both users and customers can be important sources of development suggestions. Due to rapidly and often chaotically changing market demands, finding the direction and focus of development is a serious challenge, which is particularly important in the case of digital technologies. In addition, the pace of product development must be faster so that the company can offer trendy new features to its customers. Feedback, development suggestions and requirements from customers are of decisive importance in subsequent purchasing decisions. However, the factors included in the list of requirements are rather conservative in terms of product price, performance and reliability, and therefore induce incremental rather than radical innovations on the part of developers. In addition, customers are typically unable to articulate their needs beyond the short term, making it difficult to define longer-term innovation goals and then launch innovation projects to achieve them. In contrast, asking users for their opinions and listening carefully to their suggestions goes beyond improving individual features of existing products, which in the longer term can serve as a kind of guide for implementing radical innovations.