Co-creation

Co-creation is a management initiative, or form of economic strategy, that brings different parties together (for instance, a company and a group of customers), in order to jointly produce a mutually valued outcome.Co-creation brings a blend of ideas from direct customers or viewers (who are not the direct users of the product) which in turn creates new ideas to the organization. Co-creation is a management initiative, or form of economic strategy, that brings different parties together (for instance, a company and a group of customers), in order to jointly produce a mutually valued outcome.Co-creation brings a blend of ideas from direct customers or viewers (who are not the direct users of the product) which in turn creates new ideas to the organization. Co-created value arises in the form of personalized, unique experiences for the customer (value-in-use) and ongoing revenue, learning and enhanced market performance drivers for the firm (loyalty, relationships, customer word of mouth). Value is co-created with customers if and when a customer is able to personalize his or her experience using a firm's product-service proposition – in the lifetime of its use – to a level that is best suited to get his or her job(s) or tasks done and which allows the firm to derive greater value from its product-service investment in the form of new knowledge, higher revenues/profitability and/or superior brand value/loyalty. Scholars C. K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy popularized the concept in their 2000 Harvard Business Review article, 'Co-Opting Customer Competence'. They developed their arguments further in their book, published by the Harvard Business School Press, The Future of Competition, where they offered examples including Napster and Netflix showing that customers would no longer be satisfied with making yes or no decisions on what a company offers. Within the study of Prahalad and Ramaswamy, they defined co-creation as “The joint creation of value by the company and the customer; allowing the customer to co-construct the service experience to suit their context” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004, p. 8). Maarten Pieters and Stefanie Jansen further developed existing co-creation theories and introduced the term Complete co-creation in 2013, creating clarity for organisations who struggled with implementing co-creation into their daily operations. Complete co-creation refers to the 'transparent process of value creation in ongoing, productive collaboration with, and supported by all relevant parties, with end-users playing a central role' (Jansen and Pieters, 2017, p. 15). It is regarded as a practical answer to the predominantly academic and holistic understanding of co-creation. Complete co-creation actively involves end-users and other relevant parties in a full development process, from the identification of a challenge to the implementation and tracking of its solution. It is foremost a procedure which may evolve into an organisational principle, and potentially even a co-ownership. The process of Co-creation