Exploring the ideation patterns of ordinary users: the case of mobile telecommunications services

Managers aiming to utilise the potential of involving ordinary users in ideation for innovation receive very little guidance from the existing literature with regard to how to do so in a satisfactory way. This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap by contributing to a better understanding of how users contribute to the ideation process of technology-based services, as well as how users may satisfactorily be managed within it. This is accomplished by identifying and investigating different ideation patterns and their effects on the created ideas' characteristics in the context of mobile telephony services. The current paper is based on a quasi-experimental study lasting 12 days and involving 56 ordinary users and 12 professionals as idea creators. Three different groups of users and one reference group of professionals were used. The paper inductively identifies four different ideation patterns leading to different types of ideas with regard to their innovativeness (incremental/radical). These are further related to the existing literature. The paper concludes with the managerial implications concerning how to manage user involvement for ideation to obtain either more incremental or more radical ideas.