The Value of Co-Creation
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 by 
Have you ever received a job application from a customer? A customer you involved in a co-creation project such as an online idea contest? A customer who has already submitted a couple of outstanding ideas, fully visualized? This is one example of a by-product that have occurred to many of our clients when co-creating with consumers.
Value dimensions of co-creation
Companies are increasingly using co-creation approaches as a means for collaborative new product development or market research. Quite often a virtual online world is the locus of co-creation harnessing the power of hundreds or even thousands of consumers. Helping companies to co-create with consumers we noticed remarkable by-products or spillover effects on the consumer-company and consumer-brand relationship which have also proactively been addressed for a couple of years now. Besides the described spillover effect on employer branding, further effects have been found to result from a compelling co-creation experience. For instance, consumers have been found to be willing to pay a price premium and promote the brand virally via word-of-mouth. From a CRM standpoint a captivating co-creation experience may increase consumers’ engagement and the way consumers perceive a brand.
How to utilize spillover effects of co-creation
Co-creating with consumers offers you a bundle of positive effects coinciding with your actual goals – whether you embrace it or not. Due to hundreds of highly involved consumers becoming partners in co-creation this is a great opportunity to purposively leverage those spillover effects. See the big picture. Meet your customers in a highly conducive atmosphere and strengthen the relationship with your customers. Even if your co-creation initiative primarily aims at collaborative new product development or co-creation research, it calls for a project planning and execution across company units to tap the full potential of co-creation. Involving other departments in your company helps to proactively address side effects, utilize spillover effects and amplify them.
The actual costs of co-creation
Tapping the full potential of co-creation actually reduces the costs allocated directly to the innovation facet of co-creation. If you break down the total costs of a co-creation initiative and apportion them according to the co-created value (new product development, branding, CRM, HR etc.), collaborative innovation eventually turns out to be cheaper than thought.
