Adoption, diffusion and consumer behavior in technopreneurship

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study the adoption and diffusion of technology including SAAS software and cloud computing for facilitating knowledge management (KM) in product innovation based on understanding of consumer behavior. Technopreneurship can drive sustainable product innovation by studying the patterns of consumer behavior. Sharing of consumer intelligence on cloud using SAAS is being used by several companies to drive innovation such as call centers in South Asia. However, there is no understanding role of knowledge management for understanding consumer behavior for product innovation. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology uses case method of action research technique coupled with grounded theory development. Further, the study uses interpretive structural modelling (ISM) technique for interpreting the results for understanding consumer behavior patterns for enabling product innovation. Findings - The findings suggest that enhancement of creative design based on consumer's study can lead to sustainable product development. The findings revealed that consumer behavior patterns embedded in the firm's intelligence captured in KM portal including customers' preferences and choices that can be developed into products. Knowledge management facilitated flexible manufacturing process, optimized capital expenditure using agility principles as per the study. Techniques and processes such as reactive scaling top down and bottom up and applying flexible APIs (Application Programming Interface) allowed the efficient automation of infrastructure orchestration and resource allocation. The involvement of vendors’ knowledge base facilitated creation of market ready product offers leading to sustainability. Research limitations/implications - The implications include the adoption of inter-disciplinary and inter country understanding of knowledge management application for understanding consumer behavior to lead to sustainable product development. Originality/value - The scope and scale of technology entrepreneurship include the application of knowledge management for consumer behavioral studies that have huge contributions to make product development sustainable using greener planet, purpose and product (3P model).