Cocreation- To involve or not to involve

The whole point in discussion is co creation. The essence of it being how majority of stakeholders mainly the customers fit in the system of creating new products by giving their inputs over various issues.

This has been an oft debated topic as there has been a vast expanse of famous companies supporting both.

Before answering what all is co creation let’s look into the fact that what it is not.

Co creation is not just the plain feedaback that a customer gives for a product , neither is co creation small attachment used at a personal level of any product.

Co creation is a whole movement where customers collaborate with the makers to create something which can be mass manufactured and sold to others .

Let’s look at how co creation acts:

Source: https://www.mycustomer.com/topic/customer-experience/co-creation/111040

We see that co creation consists of four steps.

The first step being exploration from the web.

The web normally consists of the listening and the talking elements. The article “The Value of listening, Heeding the call of the Snuggie” by David Wiesenfeld ,Kristin Bush and Ronjan Sikdar looks at the importance of listening through the online mode. In this method the marketers observe naturally occurring discussions between consumers about various products, brands and companies. The reason listening is preferred because many grievances are not ably captured in surveys and other methods of data collection. At such times listening method is more effective as it shows the real emotions of people. This article also looks at the question of competence of listening as compared to traditional survey techniques. It is observed in this article that listening has helped in developing the traditional methods of surveying by combining listening results with traditional methods. It is seen that for best impact both traditional asking and listening methods are required. Only then a robust understanding of market is developed. This helps in gauging market responsiveness towards various products, changes they feel and how they perceive the product.

Then comes the crowd sourcing part.

This in fact acts in conjunction with exploration part. You actually specifically try to segregate overall crowd to interested participants who have an inclination towards this process. Specific qualitative questions are asked. Laddering techniques too are used effectively at such places. Also the various inputs provided by these people are considered which have methods of further improvement of the product.

After these parts comes the most essential one- co creation.

We take all data and insights that we have gathered from the initial phases. This is the show down part. Here the idea giving consumers are introduced to professionals who take the idea to the next level. These professionals are the key people involved in bringing the idea to reality.

In many cases companies provide do it yourself kits to the people. Some of the examples being the case of EA sports where consumers are given kits to implement the ideas.

Not all ideas are taken hence this step is also the filter of ideas level. Finally capitalisation of selective ideas is done. Although we talk a lot about creative consumers most of the time who would be instrumental in bringing the product changes but it needs to be understood that not all consumers think themselves as creative. The art lies in taking out the idea.

Finally we look into the validation phase.

Here, the implementations done on the product are carried to the various target segments. The consumers try out these products and validate whether these products are worthy of market launch. Their responses are looked into and decisions are taken on that basis. We take concepts back online into a community of fresh, critical and unbiased target consumers. Now we have the opportunity to expose concepts to a relevant and constructively critical audience who give opinions which are the market acceptance or denial of the product.

Advantages of co creation:

What the customers have it in for them

• Status: An individual finds it cool to be involved with the product that he or his community finds appealing. Being in part of development of such products increases his status. He carries the product association with him now. It bases on the basic fact that people have the tendency to be seen and love to show off their creative skills and thinking.
• Customised lifestyle: What consumers have personally been involved in creating should very well guarantee them goods, services and experiences that are tailored to their needs.
• Monetary benefits: Customers also are offered profit cuts for helping a company develop the new idea.
• Employment: When a company sees the passion and expertise that some of the consumers bring to the table they end up giving them jobs for same.
• Involvement: With brands that consumers believe in there is a lot of happiness and fun involved in being part of the development.

What the firms have it in for them

• Presence of increased channels. Due to customers involvement a lot many channels come into play during the selling process. The major being the channel linked to the customers.
• Optimum use of resources. In most of these cases there is a product which is already in existence. Anything is an add on mostly to the existing product. In such a case an existing product can be upgraded. It is easier even for new ideas to be added rather than working from scratch.
• Pull instead of push: As people themselves are involved in the idea and later the product, they are very much excited regarding this product. These people are none other than the target customers. They have a strong influence in target communities in one way or the other. Because of this the whole push model sees a change and acts as a pull model.
• More publicity and goodwill: The mere instance of the companies taking customers ideas and converting into products brings a lot of goodwill in the market regarding the company. People believe that this company cares for its customers and is open to listen to their ideas.

The recent ideas of Philips using local ideas for implementing an efficient example are examples of the same.

https://www.design.philips.com/philips/sites/philipsdesign/about/design/designportfolio/philanthropy_by_design/chulha.page

Nike has also tasted a lot of success in its NikeId design project where consumers designed their own shoes.

Why co creation is not good

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what’s the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’’’

https://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/6/4/you_cant_innovate_like_apple

This is what Steve jobs had to say when asked why Apple does not believe in co creation. He stated that Apple doesn’t start asking what its target consumers want.

The biggest drawback of co creation is that people normally are boxed by the present products.

They would very ably put ideas to increase the present products but in the overall picture higher level of innovation is never achieved.

A consumer travelling by a cab would if asked about innovations would come up with ideas which would make his experience comfortable and cheaper. He may give ideas that may involve metering techniques to improve, improvement in window sizes, diesel based cars.

But the same customer is unlikely to come up with ideas where he would suggest fazing out cabs altogether and go with a  track based or flying mode of small distance transport.

The various reasons why co creation is not suggested:

Lack of disruptive innovation: Customers do not feel competition. They see the product as one more medium for them. Hence, they don’t feel the need of an altogether new product mode. They are happy with tweaks to the existing product. This would be harmful to the industry and technology as a whole. Until companies create and embrace new innovations growth cannot happen.

Apple’s ipad is an idea of such a disruptive innovation.

Consumer hostility: Consumers are normally hostile to accept new products. The recent case being the upgradation of Facebook and twitter. Both these products although came up with an excellent user interface and updated technology since people were not ready to accept this as it was seen something away from inertia of people. If co creation happens people would not at all allow such updates to happen.

Conclusion:

So, we see that although co creation is good for minor updates and a lot of increased sales for the company but for the industry as a whole it would hinder the growth as new disruptive innovation would take more time to surface.  We see that the whole selling cycle become easy.

At the same time there are many cases where people continue to still work on projects individually where co creation is not adopted like game developments for Tomb raider and other fan stages.

So, it seems that for the company’s interest it is better if co creation is adopted and then for the overall development… I leave it to you guys to have your views 🙂