Exploiting the knowledge shared among the members of a virtual community: collaborative innovation processes in a global automotive company

The rising of Web 2.0 technologies is changing the traditional way companies search and interact on the web, enabling open knowledge sharing processes and collaborative innovation. This paper describes a methodology to consolidate a collaborative Innovation approach based on exploitation of knowledge shared on the web and active participation of customers within new product development process. We tested the methodology in a case of a global automotive company that has enhanced its new product development process by launching a forum and creating a virtual customers community. The research has been articulated into three main steps: 1) identification of the main areas of analysis: New Product Development Strategies and Collaborative Innovation Tools; 2) data collection through the observation of the Company’s forum and forum/blogs launched by other firms; questionnaires and face-to-face meetings with a manager in charge of new product development; 3) application of a web text mining model (Yin, et al., 2007) to extract relevant data from the information exchanged on the company’s forum. The preliminary results indicate that the ideas exchanged by customers on the company’s forum could be used in the phase of “New Ideas Generation” and “Product Concept Design”. The next step of this research is to implement the web text mining tool within the Company’s platform for relational marketing, in order to explore the links among the emerging ideas and recognize lead users.