Consumer co-creation, an approach in which consumers and organizations jointly innovate, can yield valuable knowledge about consumers' needs and how to satisfy these needs. Yet, innovating with consumers is challenging due to their varying levels of commitment, skills, and motivations. In this research, we focus on challenges we cluster as cognition- and affect-driven and examine how these challenges can be addressed using a design thinking approach. Building on the insights gained from interviews with key co-creation stakeholders (n = 73) and three focus groups with experts in design thinking and co-creation, we develop a grounded process model facilitating co-creation with consumers. More specifically, we distill three co-creation phases (labeled as co-creating context, content, and confluence), consisting of eight constituent activities and resulting dynamics that are cognitive or affective in nature. The distilled affective dynamics manifest in ideation confidence, empathy for diverse perspectives, pleasurable engagement, and being creatively inspired; the distilled cognitive dynamics manifest in an expanded knowledge base and an enhanced ability to analyze and evaluate information. Our grounded model is integrative and responds to calls to further examine affective influences within innovation and organization. Furthermore, our research advances the theoretical substance of design thinking by explaining underlying mechanisms at play that make design thinking an effective approach. Finally, our results add to the literature on consumer co-creation by developing a robust process model that leverages design thinking and adopts a multistakeholder approach to optimize consumer co-creation outcomes. In terms of managerial implications, our research presents a structured framework with phases and (micro)activities that will help organizations to actively involve consumers in their innovation process.

Little is known about how design leaders foster design excellence “at scale” within large organizations. To bridge this gap, this article reports on interviews with 59 senior design leaders. Using a paradox perspective to frame the findings uncovers major challenges when leading design teams inside large organizations. It also identifies five pairs of opposing leadership behaviors that address these tensions and balance the overarching paradox of integrating design into the fabric of an organization while maintaining its distinctive character: being transformative yet affirmative; being directive yet accommodating; being proactive yet responsive; being intuitive yet systematic; and being holistic yet specific.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of experiential augmentation on product evaluation by consumers. An important distinction is made between product-related experiential augmentation and experiential augmentation of the environment. Furthermore, the research examines how brand familiarity moderates the effect of experiential augmentation. Design/methodology/approach: In two experiments (N = 210 and N = 70), both product-related and environmental experiential augmentation were varied. Participants tasted and evaluated a new coffee product from either a well-known or a fictitious brand. Findings: The findings of the first experiment indicate that product-related experiential augmentation contributes positively to product evaluation for both an unfamiliar and a familiar brand. Experiential augmentation of the environment influences product evaluation negatively, but only in the absence of product-related experiential augmentation. The second experiment tests some possible explanations for this negative effect and shows that it occurs only in the case of a familiar brand. Practical implications: The findings offer implications for marketing managers seeking to positively influence consumer product evaluations through experiential augmentation. First, marketing managers are advised to make a distinction between product-related experiential augmentation and experiential augmentation of the evaluation environment, and, second, they should take brand familiarity into account when employing experiential augmentation of the environment. Originality/value: This research contributes to the literature by showing that product-related experiential augmentation and experiential augmentation of the environment differ in the impact they have on product evaluation and providing insight into the relationship between brand familiarity and experiential augmentation.

Both intuition and rationality can play important roles in strategic decision making. However, a framework that specifically accounts for the interplay between intuition and rationality is still missing. This study addresses this gap by using a paradox lens and conceptualizes the intuition–rationality duality as a paradoxical tension. We draw on seven case studies of innovation projects to empirically derive a three-step process for managing this intuition–rationality tension through paradoxical thinking. Our empirical data suggest that management of the tension starts with preparing the ground for paradoxical thinking by creating managerial acceptance for the contradictory elements of rational and intuitive approaches to decision making. The process then continues by developing decision-making outcomes through the integration of intuitive and rational practices. Finally, the outcomes of paradoxical thinking are embedded into the organizational context. For each step of the model, we indicate a set of practices that, by leveraging intuitive or rational characteristics of decision making, practitioners can use to deal with this cognitive tension in the different steps of our model.