Introduction on Field of innovation in online communities

            The involvement of customers in the product development process is evident in the online communities. The product development process involves product prototyping, product conceptualization, and idea generation. The online user communities in the firm provide creativity at all the stages for the product development.  A lot of work is carried out to determine the process of product development (Füller, 2006). The literature lacks some conceptual understanding of different types of online communities that generate influence on the development and innovation of product.

        The online user communities can be classified on the basis of characteristics and interaction levels. There are five different types of community members including virtual customer community, user content collaboration, user production collaboration, user development community, and beta testing volunteer corps (Daj & Chirca, 2009). The online user communities work at different stages for product development. The importance of the study is to identify the product collaboration innovation community and it can work at a number of stages for the process of product development (Kear, 2011)

        In the previous researches, the studies explored the role of firms in the user collaboration innovation community that is in contrast to the online communities. Hypios is a business platform on the basis of network and enables the researchers to solve the issues and organizational problems on the basis of intellectual properties of the business. The Hypios satisfies the requirements of customers and service providing companies. The online platform browses multiple and different online resources for active researchers. The Hypios performs real time search for the algorithms of problems (Kozinets, Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010).

Summary of present work on Field of innovation in online communities

        The significant difference in the five types of communities is considered for diffusion and sharing. The firms justify mechanism for the governingof online communities. The organizations acknowledge the role of the innovations in the growth of the companies and the proper development of commercial firms.The innovations can be further subdivided into the two primary types including process innovation and product. In the virtual world of technology, the mechanism of open innovation is developedfor the manufacturers and the consumers. The concept about the involvement of customers and end-users on collaboration and as co-innovators is popular for online communities (Daj & Chirca, 2009).

        The focus of the present research work is to identify the knowledge gap between the preexisting research works and to identify the related research (Saunière, Leroyer, Boudin, & Jean, 2013). The research work is associated with the field of innovation in the online communities and the launch of the new product development process. The capabilities of the online platform are considered for the determination of influence and impact on the development of collaborative innovation (Faraj, Jarvenpaa, & Majchrzak, 2011).

The variable on Field of innovation in online communities

        The new product development and consumer co-creation improve the strategy to launch the product online on the virtual platform. The needs of consumers are ever changing and companies require new strategies to speed up the process of product development. The online virtual platform includes websites and social media (Richard P. Bagozzi, 2002). The online virtual platform provides more possible ways to interact with the consumers and to share the knowledge about the products. The interaction of companies with the online communities enables to launch co-created and new products (Inc. com, 2018).

        In the present study, the objective is to analyze the innovations achieved on the basis of an online virtual platform that involves customers and new product development process. The research shows that customers provide innovative, new and feasible ideas about the fostering of product and innovations in the services to improve the customer satisfaction level by improving the services. The ideas generated provided by the customers go through the screening stages in the product development process (Wang, Hsiao, Yang, & Hajli, 2016).

        The study illustrates the role of online communities in the field of innovation and how ideas can be gathered by customers for the development of services and products (Füller, 2006). With the development of technology, the online virtual network is growing rapidly that makes it significantly important for the companies to gather all the strategic information regarding the needs and desires of consumers. The research discusses the importance of transparent communication, peer to peer to peer argument, and a formal way of sharing the information (Toral & Gangi, 2011).

        The consumer engagement with the virtual new product development works as extrinsic motivation for the development of new methods. The impact of customer participation is analyzed for the virtual development project. In the project, the valuable contribution is based on the innovation and activities. The components of analysis are correlated with each other by using the engagement of consumers with and the tendency is extracted by statistical analysis. The final factors in the research are factor loadings, total item correlation, and variance (Franke, Nikolaus, & Shah, 2003).

        There are some major factors for the consumer’s engagement with the virtual new product development for instance to get information and knowledge, intrinsic interest of innovation, to illustrate new and innovative ideas, curiosity, and dissatisfaction with the previously existing products. The interest of the consumer is a frequency dependent variable (Saunière, Leroyer, Boudin, & Jean, 2013). The dependent variables in the research are the interest of the consumer in participation while independent variables are curiosity, dissatisfaction, intrinsic innovation interest, gain knowledge, illustrate innovative ideas, and monetary rewards.

        Collaborative innovation has a significant role in the product development process and managed the process of development in online fields. The role of end users is in the small groups for the sharing of knowledge with customers and innovative groups. The customers are innovative and creative in the various sectors (Daj & Chirca, 2009). The companies learn reasons about the failure rates and the process of launching new products according to the requirements of consumers. In the collaborative innovations, the general approach is considered and view point of consumers contributes to the success of new products for the functional characteristics (Daj & Chirca, 2009).

References  on Field of innovation in online communities

Füller, J. (2006). Why Consumers Engage in Virtual New Product Developments Initiated by Producers. Advances in Consumer Research , 33 (01), 639-646.

Franke, A., Nikolaus, D., & Shah, S. (2003). How Communities support innovative activities: An exploration of assistance adn sharing among innovative users for sporting equipment. Research Policy , 32 (01), 157-178.

Daj, A., & Chirca, A. (2009). DIGITAL MARKETING INSTRUMENTS: USING ONLINE COMMUNITIES FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION. International Conference on Economic Engineering and Manufacturing Systems , 10 (3), 26-27.

Faraj, S., & Johnson, S. L. (2011). Network exchange patterns in online communities. Organization Science , 22 (6), 1464-1480.

Kear, K. (2011). Online and social networking communities: A best practice guide for educators. Routledge.

Kozinets, R. V., Valck, K. D., Wojnicki, A. C., & Wilner, S. J. (2010). Networked narratives: Understanding word-of-mouth marketing in online communities. Journal of marketing , 74 (2), 71-89.

Piller, F., Vossen, A., & Ihl, C. (2011). From social media to social product development: the impact of social media on co-creation of innovation.