Guest Post by: Martijn Pater
Please find below the summary of the White Paper “Co-creation’s 5 Guiding Principles or… what is successful co-creation made of?”. The complete paper can be found here.
In challenging times, new rules apply.
Companies and organisations are searching for tools to help them win their day-to-day battles. They are faced with increasingly challenging questions: where to find future growth? How to deal with the risk of commoditisation? How to innovate from the core? How to get – or stay – connected with customers?
Can co-creation provide the answer? We think it can, but as with many other solutions, co-creation will only truly deliver if it’s done properly. Co-creation is more than just a tool; it is a program of change. We have identified a few strong recommendations to anyone wanting to venture out into this area.
The 4 Types of Co-creation
There are many ways to go about co-creation, and which to choose depends on the challenge and objectives at hand. There is always 1 initiator, i.e. the party that decides to start the initiative. This can be a company or just a single person. One (or many) contributors will be joining along in the process, but the initiator determines who can join and under what conditions. These are the two central dimensions that define types of co-creation:
Open-ness: Can anyone join in or is there a selection criterion somewhere in the process?
Ownership: Is the outcome and challenges owned by just the initiator or by the contributors as well?
These two dimensions lead to the 4 main types of Co-creation:
• Crowd of people: Also known as Crowd Sourcing. This form is all about the Law of Big Numbers: anyone can join, often via an online platform. Crowd Sourcing ‘unleashes the power of the masses’, but you’re not sure that the ‘very best’ people will (want to) contribute. (e.g.Threadless)
• Coalition of parties: In certain complex situations, a “Coalition” of parties teams up, each party adding a specific asset or skill. Co-branding also belongs to this type of co-creation. Key success factors include sharing knowledge and creating a common competitive advantage.
(e.g. Beertender)
• Community of kindred spirits: This form is most relevant when developing something for the greater good. Groups of people with similar interests and complementary areas of expertise can come together and create. (e.g. Linux)
The 5 Guiding Principles in Co-creation
In co-creation, there’s a fine line between ‘doing it right’ and ‘just not cracking it at all’. Successful co-creation initiatives tend to have a number of characteristics in common. We’ve analysed and clustered them into the following
“5 Guiding Principles in Co-creation”:
• Select the very best: You need the best ideas and the best people to deal with today’s complex issues. Involve individuals whose backgrounds and experience somehow connect to the challenge at hand. (e.g. Innocentive is a platform where scientists and other experts are gathered to solve scientific challenges.)
• Connect creative minds: Enable bright people to work together and find that ‘spark’. Share information, ideas, experiences, dreams, strategies, successes and failures in order to learn from each other. (e.g. In 2004, Lego developed a new generation of ‘Mindstorms’ products together with lead users. In 2009 these lead users are still part of the (exclusive) Mindstorms Developer Program.)
• Share results: ‘Giving back’ is crucial – as well as ‘how’ you do it. The most basic step is to keep participants informed of progress and developments. Ultimately, sharing intellectual property would be a next step in co-creation: co-ownership. (e.g. On the Apple iPhone App store platform 3rd parties can develop user applications and set their own price. The profits are shared, 70% is for the developer, 30% for Apple. 1 billion downloads so far, and counting.)
• Continue development: Co-creation only delivers when it is a longer-term engagement, preferably part of a structured process that involves parties in- and outside your company. The co-creation output will become part of the company’s innovation process. Also keep participants in the loop during this (long) process.
(e.g. in 2002 P&G started Connect & Develop: an initiative that invites people and companies from outside P&G to innovate with them. “Proudly Developed Elsewhere” is one of their new claims.)
For further reading
For you convenience we have included 5 recommended links:
The 1% Rule:
“Charting Citizen Participation”
Harvard Business Week article:
“Which kind of collaboration is good for you?”
MIT Press article:
“The principles of distributed innovation”
Wired article on Lego:
“Geeks in Toyland”
Harvard Business Week article on P&G:
“Connect and Develop: Inside P&G’s new model for innovation”
This is a summary of the White Paper “Co-creation’s 5 Guiding Principles or … what is successful co-creation made of?”. This paper was distributed by Fronteer Strategy, the complete version can be found here.
The author is Martijn Pater, partner at Fronteer Strategy
Date: April 2009
