Contemporary information systems (IS) products and services must fulfill the needs of consumers that are more widely scattered than traditional organizational end-users. New ways to incorporate these wide-audience end-users in the IS development are required. The lead-user method used in new product development is a promising approach to tackle this problem. However, the finding and recruiting of the lead-users has been found very burdensome for the firms. We propose lead-users to be found and recruited from virtual communities. This paper provides a conceptual framework that makes use of the Internet’s possibilities – not only in recruiting the lead users - but also when collaborating with them utilizing distributed Group Support Systems. Finally, we report on our preliminary field tests, discuss the implications of our work and conclude.