Knowledge of customer needs are crucial for successful corporate innovations. Demographic ageing leads to a higher share of older adults (65+ generation). Consumer-facing companies are urged to target this special or distant target group, which is mostly underrepresented in innovation teams. Various scientific domains have adopted the concept of psychological or cognitive distance, which is theoretically grounded in Construal Level Theory (CLT). Applied to an innovation context, CLT suggests that it is difficult to form detailed user representations of distant target groups and thus to acquire critical need knowledge. User involvement encompasses approaches designed to increase customer centricity and therefore helps with obtaining a better understanding of customer needs. This paper attempts to (i) explore experimentally the cognitive distance between individual developers and the target group and its role in successful ideation, and (ii) test how cognitive distance effects are moderated by the application of user-involvement measures. The results show that cognitive distance, in particular social distance, has adverse effects; user-involvement activities affect ideation quality positively when developers are socially close to the target group. Our findings reveal conditions for the applicability of CLT in innovation management. Implications for management practice include team composition and the application of user involvement when targeting distant target groups.
