Technovation 116 (2022) 102487 Available online 25 February 2022 0166-4972/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Collaborating with users to innovate: A systematic literature review Khatereh Ghasemzadeh a, * , Guido Bortoluzzi b , Zornitsa Yordanova c a Department of Management, University of Bologna, Via Capo di Lucca, 34, 40126, Bologna, Italy b DEAMS Department, University of Trieste, Piazzale Europa, 1, 34127, Trieste, Italy c Industrial Business Department, University of National and World Economy, 8mi Dekemvri 1, 1700, Sofa, Bulgaria A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Firm-user collaboration User innovation Innovation strategy Innovation management Review ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to systematize and consolidate a scattered literature on the theme of frm-user collaboration by focusing on the strategic, organizational, and managerial dynamics of frms. To achieve this aim, a systematic review of 152 articles was carried out. Papers were frst organized into six clusters of frm-user collaboration: (1) Identifying and Selecting Users and Ideas, (2) Organizing Collaboration with Users, (3) Networking with Users, (4) Engaging Users in the Innovation Process, (5) Developing Resources and Capabilities to support Collaboration with Users, and (6) Strategizing for Users’ Involvement. The main topics within each area were then organized sequentially, following a typical innovation-management process to facilitate the identifcation of further research opportunities and under-addressed topics that could be relevant to tackle. The paper contributes to the innovation literature by providing a frm-centered perspective on the strategic, orga- nizational, and managerial preconditions and dynamics needed to enable and enhance collaboration with users. 1. Introduction In the last two decades, there has been a rapid increase in the number of theories, concepts, and methods related to users’ contribution to the innovation process of frms (Bogers et al., 2010; Felin et al., 2017). The reasons are numerous. Internet technology has made users’ involvement in the innovation process signifcantly cheaper and easier than ever before, thus increasing the number of frms using online platforms, communities, and other methods to interact with users (von Hippel, 2017). More and more frms have also begun recognizing the distinctive advantages of collaborating with users while developing new offerings, and consequently have begun to organize themselves to maximize the effciency and effectiveness of such collaboration (Chatterji and Fab- rizio, 2014; Schweisfurth, 2017). The literature has frst looked at users as people innovating the frms’ products independently and to answer their own needs. This perspective on users is well captured by the defnition of user innovation (UI) and its related theory coined by Eric von Hippel (1976). It was later than users started to be considered as potential assets for frms and their innovation strategies. This change in the perspective is mainly due to Henry Ches- brough (2003) and to his open innovation (OI) theory, in which frms collaborate with external stakeholders (including different kinds of users) to increase the effciency and effectiveness of their innovation processes. So, essentially for their own return. Over time the boundaries between the two theories have been blurring (Bogers et al., 2017) as long as frms have started to apply more and more ‘distributed’ (Bogers and West, 2012) or ‘networked’ (Hur- mellina-Laukkanen et al., 2021) collaboration strategies mixing up ele- ments typical of both the paradigms (Bartl et al., 2012; da Mota Pedrosa et al., 2013; Dahlander and Magnusson, 2008; de Araújo Burcharth et al., 2014; Hienerth et al., 2014a,b). Take the case of IBM, a giant in the computer-software industry. In 1999, IBM started collaborating with Eurotech, an Italian mid-sized software company listed on the Milan stock exchange, on a new proto- col for IoT connectivity for the industrial sector called Message Queuing Telemetry Transport. The protocol was based on an idea by Eurotech that applied a typical OI strategy. The two companies later realized that additional support was needed to help make the protocol a market standard. Hence, in 2011, they decided to release the protocol for free to the open-source community Eclipse Foundation, which started to develop it autonomously, following a typical UI strategy. The protocol fnally became both an OASIS standard (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and an ISO standard (International Organization for Standardization) on the market, * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: khatereh.ghasemzadeh@unibo.it (K. Ghasemzadeh), guido.bortoluzzi@deams.units.it (G. Bortoluzzi), zornitsayordanova@unwe.bg (Z. Yordanova). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Technovation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102487 Received 28 November 2019; Received in revised form 17 January 2022; Accepted 20 February 2022