Desenvolvimento de novos produtos em cooperativas: análise da participação dos associados para o processo de inovação

Abstract

Cooperative members are the most relevant role in that kind of organization, they are at the same time owners and user, and this characteristic particularly raise up important questions about how they interact with their organization to foster innovation. Existing studies widely explore innovation theme in cooperative environments, but few emphasizes the role of members within this context. This research aims to explore the members involvement possibilities in the cooperative’s innovation processes. Through a qualitative and exploratory approach and aligned with the field of marketing and global markets, interviews were conducted with innovation management, marketing, and product development leaders from six different cooperatives. Research material was interpreted by performing content analysis. Results were categorized and are presented according to the elementary model of cooperative association (EMCA), so called and proposed in this study, which organizes the cooperatives based in main reason for the association of its members, associated members who aim to sell their goods and services and the ones who aims to buy, providers and consumers cooperatives respectively. Results suggests that the cooperatives which clearly foster innovation strategy goals, also arrange proper organization structures to bear the innovation strategy and the member do actively collaborate (cocreate) in the cooperative’s innovation process, on the other hand, in cooperatives where there is no clearly strategy implemented, members collaborate in a passive way (validation and feedback) when they are involved. Moreover, the EMCA has demonstrated consistency to clearly show up the members involvement possibilities for cooperatives of any kind, service provider, product providers and consumers. The findings contribute to create a deep view upon the contributions of members for the cooperative’s innovation processes, demonstrate the differences among the cooperatives according EMCA and pave the way for future studies to make use of the EMCA to investigate and answer different cooperative’s phenomenon.