Abstract
User engagement is widely recognised as beneficial for the innovation efforts of firms scarce with internal resources but our knowledge about the relevance of user types and engagement strategies is scarce and mostly limited to the front-end phases of the innovation process. To fill this gap, we use data from over 10,000 companies operating in four emerging innovation ecosystems in Central Europe and examine the contribution of users to product development, distribution, market positioning and the commercialisation of innovations. The results show that user engagement through customisation and co-creation promotes the success of the innovation process, with the impact of co-creation being much stronger. Consumers, intermediary users (businesses) and public sector users play different roles at different stages of innovation. These findings provide important insights for firms seeking to optimise their user engagement strategies in product innovation management.