Affiliated with the Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics (DRUID, www.druid.dk), the Danish User-centered Innovation Lab (www.duci.dk), the CBS World Class Research Environment in Open Innovation and the BioBusiness & Innovation Program ( www.bbip.dk )

Research interest

My current research activities focus on the mechanisms and effects of distributed innovation. I am particularly interested in aspects of search for innovation-related knowledge located outside the boundaries of the searching organization and investigate the effects of contextual distance on innovation performance. Core questions of this research relate to (1) how organizations can access and leverage distributed sources of innovation (search and collaboration methods), (2) what influences the selection and set-up of external search and subsequently (3) what are related effects of different search and collaboration strategies on organizations’ ability to innovate. As part of my studies I also research the role of (lead) users in generating innovations and have developed a model for efficiently applying lead user studies in corporate innovation efforts.

Journal articles

Poetz, Marion K., Prügl, Reinhard (2010), Crossing domain-specific boundaries in search of innovation: Exploring the potential of ‘pyramiding’. Journal of Product Innovation Management. 27(6): 897-914. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1566905

Poetz, Marion K., Schreier, Martin, The value of crowdsourcing: Can users really compete with professionals in generating new product ideas? Journal of Product Innovation Management (forthcoming). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1566903  

Working papers

Poetz, Marion K., Schreier, Martin (2009), Going beyond the obvious: A real-life application of idea generation using analogous market problem solvers. CBS Working Paper.

Franke, Nikolaus, Poetz, Marion K. (2008), The analogous market effect: How problem solvers from analogous markets can contribute to idea generation. WU Vienna Working Paper.

Hienerth, Christoph, Poetz, Marion K., von Hippel, Eric (2007), Exploring key characteristics of lead user workshop participants: Who contributes best to the generation of truly novel solutions? MIT Working Paper. http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=1609&cf=9