Effectiveness of non-expert idea creation activities for product development

Abstract

This paper examines how effective it is for non-professionals to participate in innovation idea creation activities. To date, there have been several studies that have shown that it is effective to involve users in idea creation activities. However, in the actual development of new products, not only users but also general people (non-professionals) such as target consumers are often gathered. The purpose of this paper is to consider how to engage general people rather than the user in the idea creation activities. In this paper, we conduct experiments that evaluate the characteristics of non-expert ideas by comparing them with experts. The idea of non-experts was very novel, but was assessed as low feasibility and customervalue. It was also confirmed that non-expert ideas resemble expert ideas when the technical attributes used to create ideas by experts were given to non-experts. From that perspective, the reason why companies involve the general public in the creation of ideas is because of novelty, and it is important to consciously incorporate such new ideas.