Consumer Engagement in Business Process Innovation: Cases of the Firms Operating in the ICT Sector (Zaangazowanie konsumentow w kreowanie innowacji procesow biznesowych: przypadki firm dzialajacych w sektorze ICT)

Consumer involvement in the innovation process is a rising trend as companies are looking for new growth streams. This paper focuses on consumer engagement in business process innovation in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. The main objective is to identify how ICT firms engage consumers in business process innovation. The research approach is built on the literature on consumers’ innovation and prosumption, whereas the empirical part is based on case studies of Apple, Google, and Microsoft. This paper demonstrates business processes in which consumers are engaged to create innovation, ways of consumers’ engaging in business process innovation, and incentives encouraging consumers to engage in such innovation. The results show that ICT firms are active players in the field of consumers’ innovations. The analyzed firms pay a lot of attention and make a lot of effort to obtain consumers’ innovations. The results show that they employ different ways of consumers’ engagement in innovation activities, especially in reviewing and designing products. They use consumers’ innovations for their business process development as well. Nonetheless, our results show that consumers’ innovations concern mainly BP 2.0 Develop and Manage Products and Services. ICT firms offer many incentives for consumers; however, our study proves that intangible incentives embracing social media services are most often offered to consumers. The results obtained can be helpful for both – the ICT and other sectors. They can show them how they can get the best out of consumers’ involvement for creating business process innovation.