Co-creation is a strategy that brings various parties together, for instance, a group of people, a business, customers of that business etc. They come together in order to jointly create a common valued outcome. An environment where these various parties share, combine and renew ideas and increase resources and capabilities is created. Together we can make something bigger than one of could have done alone. It leads to a shared vision, a shared buy-in, a shared passion and on an operational level it creates accountability.
“In times of crisis, social entrepreneurs have demonstrated their capacity to turn traditional business logic upside down, decrease the cost of their solution as much as possible, operate on a shoestring budget and the ability to be extremely ‘client’-focused. All of these things could be very valuable for companies.”
I agree with this on so many levels. Traditional entrepreneurial thinking ends up chasing an end goal where we tell ourselves “If I reach this I will be a billionaire!” Then we spend $999mil in chasing it and run large risks. Co-creation creates a shared risk and focuses more on what can be accomplished now.
Again, this stresses the fact that it creates a shared buy-in, a belonging but more importantly it moves a LOT of the risk of product development away from the business because the product is shaped and created directly by the needs and wants of the customer. So you run less of a risk of building the wrong product and losing lots of money.
“a member of that community, VR_Bones, contacted me. VR_Bones got on a train with his PC box and visited me at my home. It was a good 30 minutes or so train journey for him and he then walked to my home (another 10 minutes or so from the station) lugging his PC game rig. He wanted to show me some content, user created content, he and a few other members of the community had made for Dark Reign”
It clearly shows to just what lengths users of your product will go to tell you how they feel about and how they experience what you do. We should not ignore these people. Does your product development team go through that much effort as this user in order to learn/teach/share something? Market research will not show this, only real interaction and they reduced their risk of taking wrong strategic decisions.
Conclusion
Co-creation reduces risk so much that I do not think it can be ignored at all. I believe co-creation is the door to small business creation by the masses.
