An exploration of the mechanism of experience-driven product innovation from the paradox perspective——A longitudinal case study of the WeChat
Customers have been recognized as a vital business resource and strategic asset for enterprises.Crafting an exceptional user experience has further become a core tenet of corporate product innovation.However,a delightful user experience often contradicts the commercial development of products.Similar to the trade-offs between quality and cost,from a short-term perspective,the pursuit of profit is the fundamental economic responsibility of an enterprise,yet the chase for commercial value is bound to compress customer value.From a long-term perspective,user-centric thinking is the philosophical foundation of corporate innovation,but the pursuit of an ultimate experience will,to some extent,hinder the commercialization process of products.This raises the question of how enterpri-ses should dialectically approach the relationship between user experience and product commercialization when innovating products,in order to better utilize this contradictory relationship to aid product innovation?The earliest research primarily explored from a commercial perspective,and with the emergence of user innovation theory,discus-sions surrounding user-driven product innovation have gradually increased.However,existing literature mostly only discusses the pos-itive impacts of experience,neglecting the profit needs of enterprise commercialization.Such a one-sided mindset is prone to rigidify the efficacy of experience,confining it to the exploration of a single variable for a partial issue,making it difficult to dialectically view the contradictory relationship between experience and commercialization from a holistic perspective.Additionally,discrete experience studies are unable to connect experiences across various"cases,"conduct pattern analysis,and deduce the balanced process of dynam-ic iteration between experience and commercialization.Consequently,it becomes challenging to construct a universal theory that is more instructive and referential for the practice of corporate product innovation.Therefore,this study,grounded in paradox theory,ex-plores how enterprises can manage the dialectical relationship between the"small and beautiful"user experience orientation and the"large and comprehensive"corporate commercial orientation,revealing the micro-mechanism through which user experience indirectly drives product innovation.Through a longitudinal case study of the WeChat,this paper proposes a dichotomy of user experience dimen-sions for the experience economy era—strong functionality/service-oriented and strong emotion—and constructs a dynamic equilibrium model for experience-driven innovation flow.The study finds that product innovation can be driven by user experiences that are either strongly functional/service-oriented or rich in emotion,through one or more composite architectural innovation methods such as incremental,radical,modular,and architec-tural.It evolves among different experience network models,including specialized,integrated,combinatorial,and ecosystemic,enab-ling the exploration of product commercialization in stages:from non-commercialization,moving towards commercialization,gradually commercializing,and ultimately establishing a commercial ecosystem,all while striving to create an ultimate user experience.This study further reveals the dynamic iterative equilibrium process between the future-oriented"small and beautiful"user experience and the existing"big and comprehensive"development orientation from the perspectives of external and internal drivers of enterprises.The appropriate sequence and rhythm of different experience network models during the evolution process will facilitate enterprises to utilize experience-driven product innovation in a top-down manner,forming a diversified development path and strategy for experience-driven product innovation,providing insights for corporate product innovation in the era of the experience economy.
user innovationuser experienceproduct architectureinnovation flow
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
