Upper echelons strategic support for customer empowerment based search

We explore customer empowerment, the inclusion customers in product development activities, as a method of conducting organizational search. We note product development performance typically depends on the firm’s ability to conduct organizational search over distant terrains, while most organizations inherently favor simple-minded and local solutions that require only incremental change. We propose that customer empowerment-based organizational search allows the firm to search distant terrains and its success centrally depends on strategic support of the top management. Based on a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of empirical evidence it is found that customer empowerment supporting information processing and consequent strategic decision making ability in the upper echelons is contingent on top management team member diversity, their customer knowledge and the dynamism of the business environment.