Cultural Differences in Involving Customers for Creating and Managing Innovations to Success

Innovation management itself is for sure an established field of research and known as a critical pillar for achieving excellent business results: different models were developed in the past to describe the innovation processes and hence to support organizations on how to "create" an innovative company culture. Existing approaches on how to achieve a high innovation level basically remain on two main perceptions which are described as the process- and result-oriented perception of innovation. In a cultural aspect, it is known that the specific way of how organizations create successful product-, process- or business model-innovations is influenced by means of culture. For example, some cultures are typically seen as risk-taking while others do avoid risks which impacts naturally the way of how ideas for innovations are being treated within the creation process. However, the globalization with its increased competition on a global level forces leaders to seek for the successful "right" way on driving innovations to success. The present article is part of a research program on business excellence driven by innovation management in establishing a European "Innovation Management Landscape" (ILM). It shall show the cultural particularities of organizations within the EU28 countries on how they drive innovations to excellence with focus on the early stage of the innovation process. Especially the so-called "Fuzzy-Front-End" of the innovation process is still unexplored and more precisely the grade of customer involvement from a cultural perspective. At this stage of research, it seems that cultural aspects decide whether a "good" idea will be lead through the innovation process and becomes finally a successful innovation which can be monetarized. The findings are based on a literature review and European-wide available statistics.