Prosumerism: Transforming External Stakeholders into Internal Ones in the Innovation Process

Prosumers are defined as consumers that are involved in the revisions and in the manufacturing of products and services (Soldatova et al. in Digital communications management of the organization in the conditions of the media prosumerism development, 2021). This concept is widely identified in the renewable energy topic (Apfel and Herbes in Sustainability (Switzerland) 13, 2021; Campos and Marín-González in Energy Research and Social Science 69, 2020; Campos et al. in Sustainability (Switzerland) 11, 2019; Horstink et al. in Energies 13, 2020). However, considering what also occurs in the literature, namely the aspect of consumer participation in the conceptualization phase of new, improved products and services, the definition of prosumers, or prosumerism, can be referred not only to the thematic area of renewable energy, but much more broadly, including innovation and even higher education (Balatsyuk and Gladchenko in Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniya 74–82, 2022; Cullen in Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, 2020). In the context of renewables, a social thread is identified by defining prosumers as energy citizens (Ruostetsaari in International Journal of Energy Sector Management 14: 1157–1175, 2020), but as indicated it can be interpreted as co-production where buyers participate in the process of co-creationco-creation of contributed value (Dellaert in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 47, 2019), which finds its reference more in innovation (Isakov et al. in Innovative methods of developing solar power systems for remote and agricultural facilities in Uzbekistan, 2020). In relation to the co-creationco-creation of added value of improved or significantly modified products, one can see the innovative openness of an organization that involves its customers—buyers, in the process of identifying possible product improvements to be implemented. In a similar line of reasoning, customers who are external stakeholders become prosumers, who then become internal stakeholders cooperating and co-creating product changes and their role and relation toward organization extends beyond external and starts to transform them into internal ones. Therefore, in addition to the leading reference to the producer customer, Prosumerism is oriented toward the customer-innovator, under organizational care and reference. The main goal was to contribute toward innovative solutions conceptualizing and implementing by identifying the transformational role of stakeholders (external into internal). The text reveals the definition of transformational stakeholders, which according to Authors’ perception are those whose strengths of interests are recognized by organizations and allow them to consider internal stakeholders. Moreover this chapter’s research interests contribute to the proposed concept of new mechanisms for recognizing transformational stakeholders and presenting their perspectives for near future with regard to and based on discussed business models, also on the example of Polish apparel industry. This conceptualization reveals due to the research based on open innovationopen innovation considerations, positive and negative effects of stakeholders behaviors as well as on the idea of prosumerism as such. Moreover as the concept of transformational stakeholders is observable in a number of branches, it has a clear identification in an apparel and fashion production sphere, where the consumers are at the same time inventors and producers of the new products for themselves. Furthermore their role as the ones interested in opinionating what industries implement, they start to be engaged also in the innovation processes of industrial nature thus making them more valuable consumers for the apparel industry and consequently stakeholders.