TY - JOUR A1 - Brem, Alexander A1 - Bilgram, Volker T1 - The search for innovative partners in co-creation: Identifying lead users in social media through netnography and crowdsourcing JF - Journal of Engineering and Technology Management N2 - Despite the extensive literature on the benefits of netnography and crowdsourcing for insight and idea generation, little research has been conducted on their practical relevance and application for identifying lead users. We address this gap through an analysis of 24 lead user projects investigating the viability, underlying processes, and main differences of these new search strategies. We argue that both methods justify the significant investments by additionally providing a user-centric basis for subsequent ideation sessions with lead users. Our findings contribute to user innovation literature by demonstrating new ways of identifying these highly valuable users in the social media age. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jengtecman.2015.08.004 SN - 0923-4748 VL - 37 SP - 40 EP - 51 PB - Elsevier BV ER -