Companies
increasingly open up towards external sources to inspire and frame innovation.
We find that technology as a driver of innovation loses importance in favor of
culture, e.g. where lifestyle aspects dominate over the technological features
in a product’s appearance. Lifestyles and other socio-cultural developments and
trends often emerge at the fringes of society in communities and sub-cultures
like avant garde circles of artists.
Detecting and translating upcoming socio-cultural developments as a source for
innovation is difficult because this belongs to so-called tacit knowledge -
knowledge that is hard to grasp and cannot simply be written down. Therefore,
intermediaries play a significant role for companies to make use of
socio-cultural resources in their early innovation process (the front end of
innovation), gaining competitive advantage in increasingly dynamic market
environments.
