Co-creation Explained
It’s empowering consumers to participate in the creation, production and in many cases even the delivery of a product or service.
Passive consumption is a thing of the past – your customers are now informed, connected, networked, and empowered on a scale that has never before been seen.
So what does this mean for your company?
If your company believes that the best decisions and innovations are made in the board room then you’re in for a mind-blowing paradigm shift…surprise surprise business involves two parties – companies and customers.
So why it that consumers are left out of the decision making process? It’s because never before has such a dynamic platform for customer-company interaction existed.
The diagram below is a simply model of how customers and companies can interact to produce mutual gain.
Within this interaction there are four elements which are integral parts of a co-creative platform:
Dialogue – feedback forums provide a rich and open dialogue between customer and company.
Access – providing customers with access to tools, information and connecting them with one another.
Risk/Return – co-creation relies on reducing risk and increasing return to both parties.
Transparency – honesty and openness is a critical part of co-creation as it lubricates the information exchange.
Integrating a DART platform for co- creation into your business model in many cases means giving your costumers the choice to be a designer, builder, contributor, remixer, commenter, and recommender.
Believe it or not many of your customers are already participating in co-creation in their day to day internet usage. Commenting, rating, reviewing and recommending are all integral steps in the on-line world of co-creation. In this world of customer interaction it has never been more important to have the right employees.
What are the benefits?
A sample of the many benefits of a establishing a platform for co-creation are:
- More valuable experience delivered to customers
- More accurate targeting of products/services
- Educated and energized customers
- Increased word-of-mouth
- Increased customer retention
- More accurate inventory management
There are a few incredible companies which have incorporated this DART model into their business structure – Amazon.com, Threadless.com – over the next few weeks we will explore these business models and see exactly what benefits these companies are reaping and look at how you can do the same.