User-Centered Open Innovation in the Mobile G Development Process: A Multiple Case Study

Nowadays, there are hundreds of mobile apps on digital stores with users having quick access to most of them; therefore, developing an app is more difficult, costly, and dependent on users' tastes than ever. Because of that, it is crucial to extend the firm's boundaries for open innovation, especially with the help of the end users. However, there are still a few studies on the specific field of mobile app users. Therefore, this paper attempts to explain how to engage users in a user-centered open innovation process for mobile games -as one of the essential categories of app- development. For this purpose, a multiple case study on four successful Iranian mobile games including "Quiz of Kings", "Amirza", "Menchers", and "PerCity" has been conducted. The results show that the users can take different roles in the creativity, production, testing, and deployment phases. They participate in a larger share of content generation and virality of games. In general, the results of this paper can contribute to a better understanding of the potential value of co-creation with users to enhance product development.