Co-creation, in the context of a business, refers to a product or service design process in which input from consumers plays a central role from beginning to end.
[3] Rindfleisch and O'Hern categorize different types of co-creation in digital marketing based on how strict the requirements on submissions are (fixed vs. open) and if the selection is done by the customers themselves or by the firm (firm-led vs. customer-led).
They note that while open-source software is not typically commercial, some firms use it as part of their strategy; the examples they give are of Sun Microsystems with NetBeans and of IBM paying people to improve Linux.
They give the example of Threadless, a website selling user-designed T-shirts, which typically accepted two percent of customer submissions for product designs.
In this case the Lego Ideas platform includes parts of co-designing and submitting because the customer and the company choose the final product.
O'Hern's and Rindfleisch's concept of "submitting" is closest to traditional NPD in that the selection of ideas is entirely done by the firm and there are often strict criteria contributions must follow.
"Submitting"-type co-creation is different from traditional market research in that the firm asks people to come up with their own detailed solutions or designs, rather than just answering pre-determined questions.
According to O'Hern and Rindfleisch, typical examples of this type of co-creation are a firm organizing a competition or using a crowdsourcing platform like InnoCentive.
[Corporation(C-O-S)]: Competitor, Organization, Stakeholder, [4Cs]: Commodity, Cost, Communication, Channel, [Consumer]: Needs, Wants, Security, Education, [Circumstances]: National and international, Weather, Social and Cultural , Economic.
"[6] In their review of the literature on "customer participation in production", Neeli Bendapudi and Robert P. Leone found that the first academic work dates back to 1979.
[8] Also in 1990, Scott Kelley, James Donnelly and Steven J. Skinner suggest other ways to look at customer participation: quality, employee's performance, and emotional responses.
[10] Michel, Vargo and Lusch acknowledged that something similar to their concept of co-creation can be found in Normann's work - particularly, they consider his idea of "density of offerings" to be valuable.
[12] In 1995, Firat, Fuat, Dholakia, and Venkatesh introduce the concept "customerization" as a form of buyer-centric mass-customization and state that it would enable consumers to act as a co-producer.
In the mid-2000s, co-creation and similar concepts such as crowdsourcing and open innovation were popularized greatly, for instance by the book Wikinomics.
[20] They introduced the term "complete co-creation" for this, with the following definition: "a 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.
[27] Prahalad and Ramaswamy[28] suggested that in order to apply co-creation, the following fundamental requirements should be prepared in advance.
Ramaswamy and his co-author Francis Gouillart wrote: "Through their interactions with thousands of managers globally who had begun experimenting with co-creation, they discovered that enterprises were building platforms that engaged not only the firm and its customers but also the entire network of suppliers, partners, and employees, in a continuous development of new experiences with individuals.
A design contest or other co-creation event may backfire and lead to negative word of mouth if the expectations of the participants are not met.
In fact, several prominent co-creation examples have failed, including Local Motors, Dell IdeaStorm and MyStarbucksIdeas.