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Co-creation

A strategy of actively involving customers or users in the product development process to create more valuable and user-centric solutions.

"Working with end users to drive evolution of a specific activity, practice or data set."

  • Simon Wardley

🤔 Explanation​

What is Co-creation?​

Co-creation is a strategy that moves customers from being passive recipients of a product to active partners in its creation. It involves building a collaborative relationship with users, inviting them to contribute ideas, provide feedback, and participate directly in the design and development process. This ensures that the final product is deeply rooted in user needs and context, rather than being based on internal assumptions. It is a powerful way to drive the evolution of a product by working directly with the people who will use it.

Why use Co-creation?​

By involving users as partners, companies can:

  • Develop Better Products: Directly tap into user knowledge and creativity to build solutions that are a better fit for the market.
  • Increase Customer Loyalty: When users feel a sense of ownership and contribution, they are more likely to become loyal advocates for the product and brand.
  • Reduce Market Risk: Co-creation provides continuous validation from the target market, reducing the risk of building something nobody wants.
  • Foster a Community: The collaborative process can build a strong, engaged community around a product or brand.

🗺️ Real-World Examples​

LEGO Ideas​

LEGO Ideas is a platform where fans can submit their own designs for new LEGO sets. The community votes on these submissions, and if a design gets enough support, LEGO will review it for production as an official set, with the original fan designer receiving a share of the royalties. This is a perfect example of co-creation, where the company has outsourced a significant part of its product design to its most passionate users, resulting in some of its most popular and creative sets.

Linux and the Open Source Community​

The entire open-source software movement is a massive example of co-creation. The Linux operating system, for instance, is not built by a single company but by a global community of developers who are also its users. They contribute code, fix bugs, and decide on the future direction of the project. Companies like Red Hat then build businesses by packaging and supporting this co-created software.

Threadless​

Threadless is a t-shirt company that built its entire business model on co-creation. Artists from around the world submit t-shirt designs, and the community votes on which designs should be printed and sold. This allows Threadless to offer a constantly changing, community-curated selection of products with minimal in-house design staff.

🚦 When to Use / When to Avoid​

🚦 Co-creation Strategy Self-Assessment Tool

Find out the strategic fit and organisational readiness by marking each statement as Yes/Maybe/No based on your context. Strategy Assessment Guide.

Landscape and Climate

How well does the strategy fit your context?

  • Your map shows a product or service where user needs are diverse, complex, or poorly understood.
  • There is a passionate, engaged community of users around your product or market.
  • Competitors are offering generic, one-size-fits-all solutions.
  • The value of your product is highly dependent on user context and creativity.

Organisational Readiness (Doctrine)

How capable is your organisation to execute the strategy?

  • We have a culture that is open to external ideas and values customer feedback.
  • We have the tools and platforms to facilitate collaboration with our user community.
  • Our leadership is willing to relinquish some control over the product development process.
  • We have a clear process for managing, evaluating, and integrating user contributions.

Assessment and Recommendation

Strategic Fit: Weak. Ability to Execute: Weak.

RECOMMENDATION
Consider alternative strategies or address significant gaps before proceeding.

LowHighStrategic FitHighLowAbility to Execute

Use when​

  • You have an engaged and motivated user base that is willing to contribute.
  • You are operating in a market where deep user understanding is a key competitive advantage.
  • You want to build a strong community and foster brand loyalty.

Avoid when​

  • Your users lack the knowledge or motivation to contribute meaningfully.
  • Your development process requires a high degree of secrecy or control.
  • You do not have the resources or commitment to properly manage the co-creation process. Asking for input and then ignoring it is worse than not asking at all.

🎯 Leadership​

Core challenge​

The core leadership challenge is to shift the organizational mindset from "we know best" to a genuine partnership with users. This requires a degree of humility and a willingness to cede some creative control. Leaders must also create a structure and a culture that can effectively manage and integrate a high volume of external contributions without losing strategic focus or design coherence.

Key leadership skills required​

  • Community Building: The ability to foster and nurture a vibrant, collaborative community.
  • Facilitation: The skill to guide the co-creation process and synthesize diverse inputs into a coherent vision.
  • Openness: A willingness to listen to and act on ideas from outside the organization.
  • Strategic Clarity: The ability to provide a clear strategic framework within which the co-creation can happen, preventing it from becoming a chaotic free-for-all.

Ethical considerations​

The main ethical consideration is fairness. If you are asking users to contribute their time and creativity, you must be transparent about how their contributions will be used and recognized. This could involve financial compensation (like LEGO Ideas), public recognition, or simply a clear explanation of why an idea was or was not used. Exploiting free labor under the guise of co-creation can quickly destroy community trust.

📋 How to Execute​

  1. Identify Your Co-creators: Find the most passionate and knowledgeable users in your community.
  2. Choose Your Method: Select a co-creation method that fits your context. This could range from online forums and idea submission platforms to in-person workshops and user advisory boards.
  3. Provide a Framework: Give your co-creators a clear brief and a set of constraints to work within. This ensures that their contributions are aligned with your strategic goals.
  4. Facilitate the Process: Actively manage the collaboration, provide feedback, and help the community to build on each other's ideas.
  5. Evaluate and Integrate: Establish a clear process for evaluating the co-created ideas and integrating the best ones into your product roadmap.
  6. Recognize and Reward: Publicly acknowledge the contributions of your co-creators and find appropriate ways to reward them for their efforts.

📈 Measuring Success​

  • Quality and Quantity of Contributions: Are you receiving a high volume of valuable ideas and contributions from your community?
  • Product Improvement: Have the co-created features led to measurable improvements in user satisfaction, engagement, or sales?
  • Community Growth and Health: Is your co-creation community growing and remaining actively engaged?
  • Brand Loyalty: Do participants in the co-creation process show higher levels of brand loyalty and advocacy?

⚠️ Common Pitfalls and Warning Signs​

Managing the Noise​

A large, active community can generate a huge volume of ideas, making it difficult to identify the signal in the noise.

Disappointment and Burnout​

If community members feel that their contributions are being ignored, they will quickly become disillusioned and disengage.

Loss of Cohesion​

Without a strong guiding hand, a co-created product can become a disjointed collection of features that lacks a coherent vision.

Intellectual Property Issues​

Be clear from the outset about who owns the intellectual property of the co-created ideas to avoid legal disputes down the line.

🧠 Strategic Insights​

The End of the Black Box​

Co-creation breaks down the traditional "black box" model of product development, where companies create products in secret and then push them to the market. It recognizes that in a networked world, the best ideas can come from anywhere.

Value is Jointly Created​

The core insight of co-creation is that value is not created by the company and then delivered to the customer. Instead, value is co-created through the interaction between the company and the customer.

❓ Key Questions to Ask​

  • The Community: Who are our most passionate users, and how can we engage them in our development process?
  • The Platform: What tools and platforms do we need to facilitate effective co-creation?
  • The Process: How will we manage the flow of ideas and ensure that the best ones are implemented?
  • The Value Exchange: What is the value proposition for our co-creators? Why should they participate?
  • The Control: How much control are we willing to give up to our community?

🔀 Related Strategies​

  • Open Approaches: Co-creation is a form of open innovation and often relies on open platforms and standards.

  • Innovate-Leverage-Commoditize (ILC): Co-creation can be a powerful input to the "Leverage" phase of the ILC cycle, providing clear signals about what to commoditize next.

  • Cooperation - working closely with partners and customers to jointly develop and refine offerings.

  • Press Release Process - communicating co-creation milestones publicly to attract contributors and validate user-driven features.

  • Experimentation - running collaborative tests with users to co-develop and validate concepts before full-scale development.

  • Harvesting - monetising and integrating co-created innovations into the broader product portfolio.

  • Differentiation - leveraging unique user contributions to create distinguishing features and competitive advantage.

⛅ Relevant Climatic Patterns​

📚 Further Reading & References​

Author

Dave Hulbert
Dave Hulbert
Builder and maintainer of Wardley Leadership Strategies