Frontline Employees as Innovators: Generating Innovative Ideas from Customer Contact Situations

The importance of frontline employees (FLEs) for the success and effectiveness of organizations is recognized by researchers and practitioners alike (Hartline and Ferrell 1996; Singh 2000). However, their importance for the innovativeness of companies is often underestimated and has received little attention in prior research. Their boundary spanning position has them uniquely placed to listen to the voice of the customer (Griffin and Hauser 1993) and to make this voice heard in their organization. Integrating customer information in innovation processes positively influences the success of new product and service development projects (Gruner and Homburg 2000; Matthing, Sanden and Edvardsson 2004). This appears to be particularly true for the early stages of the innovation process, the generation of ideas (Alam 2002). FLEs represent a unique and valuable source for this information (GrOnroos 2007; Pelham and Lieb 2004) as they are the organizations closest link to their customers (Singh 2000).