The Co-creation Roadmap: Six Steps to Tap the Wisdom of Crowds

The Co-creation Roadmap G.Sankaranarayanan

Aazhi Port (A division of Aazhi Publishers)

First Edition: December 2011 Price: Rs 195 Copyright Š 2011 by G Sankaranarayanan All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Aazhi Port 1 A, Thilagar Street Balaji Nagar Ayyappan Thangal Chennai 600077 contact@aazhipublishers.com http://www.aazhipublishers.com

Aazhi Port is a division of Aazhi Publishers, Chennai.

Dedication Dell Inc, for its “power to do more� with social co-creation

Contents Foreword

9

Preface

13

Why Co-creation?

20

The P6 Framework

28

Priority

36

Participation

52

Problem

68

Project

78

Platform

94

Promotion

108

Afterword

125

Foreword Mr Gaurav Bhalla

Author Collaboration and Co-Creation: New Platforms for Marketing and Innovation

Co-creation as a concept, as an idea is not new to the world.

It has existed for as long as we humans have. Hunters, gatherers, bakers, and shoemakers could not have existed without co-creation, nor could the development and growth of formal economies, as we know them today.

Don’t want to go that far back in time? Try The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Not quite 200 years old, it is a living proof of the power of co-creation. Seventy years in the making, it was not written by a single man or a small group. It was co-created; a product of global collaboration between the English-speaking people of the late 18th and the early 19th centuries. Till today, the OED continues to grow and evolve, thanks to co-creation. Yes, it has editors and a formal staff. However, the resources and knowledge of the editorial staff, no matter how vast, will always lag the pace at which the English language is evolving. The world is far more complex today. There was one English when the OED was first developed, there are several English-es today; Hinglish, Chinglish, and Spanglish, just to name The Co-creation Roadmap 9

a few! Without co-creation, and the collaborative contribution of thousands of interested English speaking people around the world, it would have been difficult to keep the OED alive.

What is new in co-creation, however, is the introduction of social media technology which is enabling businesses to adopt it rapidly as a formal business practice. Scarcely does a day go by that we don’t hear of how companies like Dell, Nike, P&G, and GE excel at creating new value for their customers through co-creation. But, as is the case with all fast growing management practices, for every one company that has figured out a way of incorporating co-creation in its portfolio of skills and competencies, there are at least a dozen others wondering where to get started and how best to jump in. It is here that Sankar’s book The Co-creation Roadmap makes a valuable contribution.

Whenever a new, formal business practice, whether it is customer focused, like Customer Life-time Value, or operations focused, like Six Sigma, begins to be adopted rapidly, it is tempting to assume that the fog of uncertainty concerning what the new practice is, how it works, why it is better than incumbent alternatives, and how best to adopt and implement it, lifts as fast as the talk and reporting surrounding it. That assumption is usually false, which is why we need a steady flow of education and informed conversations to constantly illuminate and educate. Here again Sankar’s book makes a contribution; it adds a different voice to the ongoing conversations on co-creation by approaching the subject from a different perspective, a social perspective.

Take for example issues related to problem broadcast and corporate social participation, two of the six steps discussed in the book. As a rule, companies are reluctant to broadcast what problems they are wrestling with to the world at large.

That may be acceptable if businesses operate in distinctly separate and disconnected spaces from the communities they operate in. But they don’t. The rules of engagement change The Co-creation Roadmap 10

dramatically when problems confronting businesses overlap significantly with the problems facing the communities in which they operate. A case in point is the recent BP oil spill.

Was it just BP’s problem, or was it a social problem as well?

At times like this, a willingness to collaborate and to be more open results in greater shared-value creation than when either company or community operate on their own.

The book also does well by drawing attention to the need to be social on the inside as well, and on the role and importance of employees. The openness that is being advocated on the outside is also vital on the inside. No company can successfully collaborate with key stakeholders on the outside by ignoring key stakeholders on the inside – their employees. Silo busting – getting employees across the entire organization, regardless of their departmental affiliation and allegiance, to embrace and liberate the Voice of the Customer within the organization – is non-negotiable, if co-creation is to succeed and result in meaningful customer value creation.

Finally, we live in a world obsessed with technology, and lately with social media. Both technology and social media are important enablers of co-creation; they are necessary, but they are not sufficient. More important than which technology is used and which social networking site is leveraged, is what customer value is created. This is especially important when it comes to customers living at the bottom of the pyramid.

Which is why we applaud and celebrate examples that leverage technology and social media that result in incremental value for customers; programs like the $300 house, Godrej’s ChotuKool refrigerator, Philips Chulha, and the role played by every day citizens in mobilizing large scale relief when tragedy struck Haiti a few years ago, and Japan more recently.

Genuine co-creation, as Sankar’s book gently reminds us, should always result in incremental customer value. Ideally, it should also result in shared value creation, a better life for the The Co-creation Roadmap 11

other 2 or 4 billion, depending on how you count. That ideal is still a few years away, but the journey has already begun. Books like the one you have in your hand, dear reader, remind us that dreaming is just as important as achieving.

Wishing you happy co-creation journeys!

Mr Gaurav Bhalla New Jersey, USA 23rd August

The Co-creation Roadmap 12

Preface

The hyphenated word, ‘co-creation’ is yet to be accepted by dictionaries. But it has already become an indelible part of the business and spiritual lexicon. Both the seekers of wealth and health find the word conveying the highest forms of ideals their fields could ever come up with.

There are many definitions of co-creation in these two fields.

However, the underlying emphasis appears to be the same: going beyond the illusory existence of ‘self-interest’. Clearly, co-creation in business is possible only when businesses put society’s interest first - ultimately, a business is never a stand-alone entity, cut off from the society. The enlightened way of management sees that the interests of business and society are one and the same.

There is an interesting story from the spiritual lore, which has a message for managers too. Once, there was a guru, Ribhu, and a disciple, Nidhaaga. One day, Nidhaaga was watching a royal procession at his village. His guru, in the disguise of a rustic old man, manages to cut a conversation with Nidhaaga.

“Young man, what are you so intently looking at there?” Ribhu The Co-creation Roadmap 13

asked. Nidhaaga could not realise that the questioner was none other than his guru. He replied that he was watching the king visiting the city on his elephant.

“Oh I see! A king and an elephant! But who is the king and who is elephant?” came the next question. Nidhaaga was bewildered. “What is the use of talking to a person like you, who does not even know the difference between a man and an animal,” he wondered, but he still replied patiently: “The one who is above is the king and below is the elephant.”

Ribhu pestered, “Above and below?! I can’t understand what is above and what is below. Pray, please explain.” Nidhaaga, naturally, lost his temper. He determined to teach a lesson to the old man, who he thought, was making fun of him. Nidhaaga got on top of the old man. “Now you understand, I am above and you are below”.

The old man was excited! He thanked Nidhaaga. “Great, I now understand what you meant by above and below. But young man, what do you mean by “I” and “you”? Confronted thus with this ultimate philosophic question, Nidhaaga suddenly realised that the old villager could not be an ordinary man. Within no time, Nidhaaga found that he was his guru, Ribhu, who had come to teach him the Truth of non-duality.

He payed respect to his guru and returned with him to continue his spiritual practice of self enquiry.

With co-creation, managers too are being confronted with the question of non-duality of ‘I’ - the producer, and ‘you’ - the consumer or society. The distinction between them is increasingly getting blurred. Co-creation results in the coming together of producer and conumer as prosumer. It helps businesses go beyond the dichotomy of business goals and society’s goals, and focus on what is the common good.

Co-creation, therefore, calls for not just the mastery of social media technologies but the realization that the interests of business and society can co-exist.

The Co-creation Roadmap 14

Today, we can find that a number of businesses being powered by social media, the fans and followers of Facebook and Twitter. In a way, co-creation is re-introducing the practices of personalisation and customization that existed in the preMass market era or age of Industrialisation. The partnership with ‘people without titles’ is put to use to source ideas that go into governing the entire life-cycle of a business, from wealth creation to distribution.

Many global organizations clearly understand that including the aspirations of society is necessary for success in the social media age. They view that social support (‘social license’) is inevitable for businesses is gaining momentum. A McKinsey Survey of global business leaders, conducted in 2010, reveals that over 67% of the respondents expect the influence of the external stakeholders – from governments to media - will grow in the future. They say that already “about 50% of the credit to corporate decisions goes to the governments, 10% to NGOs and 20% to media.”

The growing influence of society in business signals “the democratization of industry”, to quote Prof C K Prahalad, who envisaged an economy, “by people, for people and of people”, as companies embrace co-creation.

This book proposes P6 Framework to help businesses evolve a road map for transforming their digitized business into a democratized business. It can guide businesses to establish a wide social presence using social media and partner with society to co-create ‘common good’ value products, services, and even organizations.

The Framework is designed keeping in mind the use of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. But the ideas can be applied in projects that use no social media or Internet/mobile technologies at all. The underlying philosophy of co-creation is the same. We need to create a wide social presence; share our problems; motivate people to contribute.

The Co-creation Roadmap 15

The P6 Framework stands for: Priority Coming up with a common goal - ‘co-creation hot spots’ - that meet the needs of business and society Participation Forming and engaging internal teams - ‘co-creation board’, in social media conversations and collaborations Problem Creating digital spaces - ‘Problem Wall’ - for stakeholders to post business problems Project Initiating co-creation projects such as idea contests and developer challenges Platforms Creating the right mix of platforms - a ‘Platform Bazaar’, to engage different stakeholder groups Promotion Offering right incentives and motivations for the participants to take right actions The Framework can function as an ideation platform for managers to think through the ways of tapping the “wisdom of crowds”. Hopefully, the book would serve as a source of inspiration for entrepreneurs who are in search of a good and sound base to build their co-creation strategies on.

I welcome you to try out the relevance of this framework, and share with me your views at sankar@younomy.com. Let us co-create!

Author December 2011

The Co-creation Roadmap 16

Acknowledgements First and foremost, I thank Mr Gaurav Bhalla, Author, “Collaboration and Co-Creation: New Platforms for Marketing and Innovation�and CEO, Knowledge Kinetics, a consulting firm, for his foreword. Such is his passion for the subject that he favourably responded to the request of a first time author for a foreword. Despite his busy traveling schedule, he took his off time to pen down his views on co-creation and the ideas presented in the book.

I thank Mr Ram S Ramanathan, CEO Coach, for his afterword, and for his authoring tips and guidance. He is someone who can share his time and knowledge instantly for others without thinking for a moment about his own benefits.

My profound thanks to the co-creation experts and enthusiasts: Mr Andy Smith, Co-Author, The Dragonfly Effect, Mr Bill Fischer, Professor of Management Technology, IMD, Switzerland, Mr Brian Millar, Director - Strategy, Sense Worldwide, Mr Dave Sloan, Treehouse Logic, Mr Frank Piller, Chair Professor of Management at the Technology & Innovation Management Group of RWTH Aachen University, Germany, Mr Jim Brown, President, Tech-Clarity, Mr Peter Ryder, President (North America), Jovoto, and Mr Simon Holloway, Principal - Processes & RFID, Bloor Research.

They gave me the opportunity to exclusively interview them on many aspects of co-creation. I thank them for allowing me The Co-creation Roadmap 17

to present their valuable views in this book.

I take this opportunity to thank my good friend, Mr S Senthilnathan, CEO, Aazhi Port, for publishing the book. He helped me publish my first news article on information technology in an English weekly about twelve years ago.

Now he has made me an author too. I thank Mr A J Balasubramanian, my mentor for his valuable inputs for the book.

I thank Mr R Shivakumar, Deputy Director, Confederation of Indian Industry - Southern Region, Mr Kiruba Shankar, CEO, Business Blogging Pvt Limited, and Mr Ramkumar Singaram, Director, Catalyst PR for their support.

Friends like Mr Ramachandra Raja, Mr Sakthivel Raja, Mr Gopikumar, and Mr P Ramsingh Raja even offered their offices where I can spend time working on this book. My heartfelt thanks to them.

I thank Mr Johannes Fuchs, a visual communication student from Germany, whose photo I have used for the cover, and Rajasekar, my layout artist friend who designed the cover.

The core ideas of the book had been published, republished many times in my blogs and I had the benefit of listening to the opinions, and feedback of many experts. I thank them all.

Let me also thank the publishers of cartoon and presentation tools such as ToonDoo, Creately, and Weebly that I used to create content for this book.

I thank my family members and my friends, Saravanan, Anand, Kaushik, Srividhya, and Ramnath for their encouragement. Last but not the least, I express my sincere thanks to my lovely customers for their patience - for, I found myself working on the book when actually I should be working for their projects.

G Sankaranarayanan Chennai

The Co-creation Roadmap 18

Co-Creation

The Co-creation Roadmap 19

Chapter 1

Why Co-Creation?

Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him Mahathma Gandhi Product failures.

Poor customer satisfaction.

Corporate scandals.

Social unrest.

Environmental damage.

What such issues have to do with co-creation? Usually, what pops up to our mind, when we talk about social media or co-creation are phrases like open innovation, social product development, crowd sourcing, etc. However, the essence of co-creation is about creating ‘a shared future’. A future that represents a win-win for business and society.

Essentially, co-creation is about establishing a wide social presence for companies to know and include the interests of all stakeholders - from customers to common man to cocreate products, services and organizations that represent a

The Co-creation Roadmap 20

shared future. When Professor C K Prahalad and Professor Venkat Ramaswamy introduced the concept of co-creation in their Harvard Business Review article, “Co-Opting Customer Competence”, in 2000, it gained immediate currency in the business world. Companies found a holistic approach in it to solve macro challenges arising out of major phenomena like globalization and threats like global warming, as well as enterprise level challenges in the functional areas of product development or marketing.

Business Week rates co-creation as the second most important global phenomena, next only to sustainability. However, they both go hand in hand. Says Mr Solomon Darwin, Associate Director of the Center for Open Innovation at UC Berkeley, “the key to developing a green approach to managing global resources and mitigating pollution lies in open innovation”, which is a popular form of co-creation.

Is it an ideology?

Co-creation does not have to be an ideology. It is just “common sense”, to quote Mr Jake Nickell, Co-Founder, Threadless, a marvellous success story in the social co-creation space.

Threadless offers a classic example of how engaging customers in business has irresistible benefits such as: zero product failures, high customer engagement, enhanced corporate governance, etc. To quote an Inc Magazine report : “Because community members told them precisely which shirts to make - every product eventually sold out. Nickell’s company had never produced a flop.” Threadless also sells 100% of its stock.

Nickell held his first contest, titled Threadless, in 2000, asking his designer friends to submit their best works and or pick their favorites and win two free T shirts. The first contest received just about 100 submissions, and they printed two dozen copies The Co-creation Roadmap 21

of five T shirts. Instantly, all their products sold out. Today, thousands of designs compete in any given week, but the basic business model remains the same. Each week, the staff selects about ten designs. Each designer selected receives $2,000 in cash, a $500 gift certificate, as well as an additional $500 for every reprint.

Only when a particular design receives a good number of votes, does Threadless take it for production. It sells millions of T-shirts every year. However, since, Threadless designs are picked by the community, there are no product failures.

Is it about vision?

In co-creation, every business process - right from conceiving an organizational goal to developing a new product - is carried out based on the real needs of producers, consumers, and society - and, not out of what Mr Peter Drucker called “managerial ego” that arises out of lop-sided ideologies. It actually means that a company does not have to create a proprietary ‘vision’, which might come in conflict with the changing market realities or societal needs.

This book talks extensively about the need for companies to be wary of taking an unilateral approach to setting business goals and instead opt for co-defining them, by engaging stakeholders in the process of defining.

Is it technology?

No doubt, social media networking sites and social media monitoring tools can be great enablers for companies in creating the social presence, and analysing the areas of concerns of stakeholders, respectively. At the same breadth, it should be said that social media does not equal social presence. Just because a company has a big following in Facebook or Twitter, it does The Co-creation Roadmap 22

not mean that it has a wide social presence.

Ultimately, we can gauge the social presence of a company better by seeing the “common good” that emerges out of its business practices or products, rather than by the number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers it has.

The Ramco Way There can be any number of examples of how such basic tenets of co-creation are applied by old economy companies in traditional ways without formal strategies and adoption of social media technologies.

I would like to cite the case of Ramco Group, which owns India’s fifth largest cement manufacturing company, Madras Cements. Founded in 1935, Ramco is one of enormously successful business groups in India with a turnover of about US$ one billion. The company does not have a formulated framework for co-creation or social media, but it is a co-creator par excellence. The group can be observed following some of the basic tenets of co-creation: putting the stakeholders’ interest first in decision making, co-defining goals, having genuine social presence, active social participation, and so on.

Larger than business goals The group registered impressive business growth and has also made some unique contributions to external stakeholders.

The annual capacity of its cement company rose from 66,000 tonnes in 1962 to 12 Million tonnes in 2010. Its textile division was started in 1938 with 6,800 spindles. Today, it boasts of a combined capacity of 4.5 lakh spindles. The group’s turnover had increased from about four crores in 1940s to close to about Rs 4,000 crores today.

Ramco’s textile and cement units have not suffered product The Co-creation Roadmap 23

failures. In fact, Ramco’s yarns have been the market leaders in Japan’s premium yarn markets. At no point in time its cement plants had over capacity - in contrast, many major Indian cement players, during the infrastructure boom in the late Nineties, were on an acquisition spree and had to suffer not only over capacity but also closure of production units, during the slowdown that followed.

There were no major labour issues. And, Ramco’s Rajapalayam Mills, its textile division, is perhaps the only company in India that has been giving dividend to its shareholders for the past seventy five years - without a single year’s break.

Co-defining goals Ramco takes a collective approach to goal setting. To quote Mr P R Ramasubrahmaneya Rajha, Chairman, Ramco Group, the company does not set “artificial business goals” to expand its production or increase its turnover.

“When we put our first cement plant with few thousand tonnes, we did not set expansion targets to make it big just for the sake of it. Because, when you set targets internally, you might have to compromise [on the interests of external stakeholders]. But, just because we did not set goals, it doesn’t mean we have not grown. Where is 66,000 tonnes and where is 12 million!,” he asks referring to the capacity expansion of his cement units.

Social presence Ramco does not have a co-creation board or social media team but it does not miss out on identifying the interests of external stakeholders. The company simply encourages its top executives to be knowledgeable and sensitive to the aspirations of people from all walks of life - and not just customers or distributors. Ramco’s managers - right from its group chairman Mr Rajha, maintain direct interactions with the people of local

The Co-creation Roadmap 24

communities, though there are no rules to make their social participation mandatory.

In the case of Ramco, social participation is just a way of life.

Despite being one among the top three highest paid CEOs of India for many years, Mr Rajha meets and spends time with people from ordinary backgrounds. His walking friends are labourers, local traders. He is perhaps one of the very few CEOs in India who can tell you what is the current price of onion in the local market!

“When I take a decision, I think not once or twice, but hundred times. Because if I take a wrong decision, it may not affect me or my family immediately, but it would affect the families of my employees, distributors, and local community,” says Mr Rajha, emphasizing the need for putting the stakeholders’ interests first, before personal ambitions.

Identifying unique social needs So wide and deep is its social presence that Ramco runs a trust for the welfare of Adivasis, aborigines, treated as untouchables and a residential Vedic school for Brahmin students, who belong to the upper class.

Even today, a large section of Adivasi community of Tamil Nadu, an Indian state, live in Western Ghats, totally cut off from the modern world. Ramco constructs cement houses for adivasis at suitable locations in the State. It runs a world class hostel that provides formal school education, special training for English and computer science, for adivasi children for free and takes care of their basic requirements: food, clothes, and healthcare.

Ramco’s Vedapatasala, the residential Vedic school, teaches the ‘upper class’ Brahmin students, who do not have the opThe Co-creation Roadmap 25

portunity to learn Vedic scriptures in a formal school setup.

Addressing the area of Vedic education is addressing a social need in India, because from cradle to grave, all major events in the life of a Hindu are guided by Vedic scriptures. However, since there are not enough Vedic schools, there is huge shortage of Vedic priests to perform such religious practices. Ramco is the only corporate in India to run a Vedic school.

The significance of having identified the needs of two different sections of the society can be attributed to Ramco’s pursuit for the “common-good” value. Such unusual examples of co-creation is right now happening in thousands of ways across the corporate world. And mostly, they are being driven by “common man” CEOs like Mr Rajha.

The Co-creation Roadmap 26

Framework

The Co-creation Roadmap 27

Chapter 2

The P6 Framework “Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive” Napoleon Hill

Co-creation is as ‘organized’ or ‘unorganized’ as the people’s revolution of Egypt. The country’s political history shows that in the past, there were many attempts from different ideological fronts to overthrow President Mubarak’s government. However, the revolution which finally ousted the monarch in April, 2011, is regarded, by and large, as the people’s movement. It was vastly enabled by social media. There were no strategies, and formal organizations. Yet, the events that unfolded marked the coming together of “people without titles” - the praja, the citizens. They came at the right time for the common good: to find solutions to issues such as unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of freedom of speech, and poor living conditions that were plaguing the country. It is nothing less than a co-created revolution.

Even in the domain of business, co-creation is truly ‘user generated’. It is not accomplished solely by companies or NGOs or customers, but largely by society.

So, if co-creation cannot be “organised” what purpose does The Co-creation Roadmap 28

a framework serve? The answer: companies need to generate ideas from its own teams for a co-creation project. Here, a framework can be used as an ideation platform. Then, the team should know the essential steps or stages involved in a typical co-creation process. In this context, the framework can be used to evolve a road map.

Today, many companies are dabbling with social co-creation: starting a blog, running a contest, etc., but without having a strategy, a roadmap.

Kalypso, a consulting firm, which surveyed over 90 manufacturing and service companies in 2011, found that companies are not able to use social media for co-creation in a straight forward manner because “there are no time-tested industry practices to turn to as a guide”. Companies admitted that they lack the understanding of social co-creation within their organizations.

“Almost half (46%) of surveyed companies with active initiatives or plans admit that they are not sure which approaches work. Over one-third (36%) say they are challenged by a lack of internal expertise or best practices to follow.” To cite a 2010 survey – this one by Digital Brand Expressions, “only 41% of the companies are using social media, as part of a strategy”, (and among those that actually have a plan, only 69% were measuring the results)”.

Many companies simply want to “engage” with external stakeholders and create conversations without aiming for a particular business outcome. Companies are not sure as to how to co-create a business value. Engagement is only a means to an end. We should ask engagement “with” whom? and engagement “for” what?

Framework for business value Companies interested in co-creating business value on an ongoing basis, should have a deep understanding of co-creation The Co-creation Roadmap 29

and invest in planning. With sufficient preparation, companies can engage stakeholders in their core competence business areas such as: research, production, and not just marketing or public relations. Even if it is a blog or employing a customer relations executive to status update and respond to Facebook queries, it still should be done as part of a strategy. Without a strategy, tweeting is just typing.

The Co-creation Roadmap 30

Why P6?

The landscape of social media-enabled co-creation is new.

Hence, it is all the more important for companies to think about an end-to-end strategy, a knowledge blueprint that gives everyone a perfect picture of what is required to be done and when. What is needed is the exposure to the art and science of co-creation: the steps involved in the process of co-creation, and approaches that could make co-creation a success. The central theme of this book is the P6 Framework, which stands for Priority, Participation, Problem, Project, Platform, and Promotion. The P6 Framework proposes six steps/action items for successful social co-creation. The Framework is intended to serve as a guide for businesses to create a great social presence that result in a truly shared future.

We need ideation frameworks like P6 Framework to better understand the stages involved in the social co-creation process and to come up with a road map. Practically, having a framework can help managers brainstorm, ask the right questions, involve the right people and conduct focused discussions to evolve strategies on open innovation, social media adoption, social co-creation, etc.

The Framework can help organizations find co-creation in a new light. With P6, companies can make almost all their business functions or processes ready for internal as well as external social co-creation.

Another aspect of the P6 Framework is that it advocates a project-based approach to co-creation. It encourages companies to consider co-creation as a project with a timeframe and set business goals. P6 forces companies to identify specific project requirements, come up with incentives, partner with right people, and aim for results.

The Co-creation Roadmap 31

What P6 is not?

P6 covers all crucial steps and stages involved in a typical social co-creation process - the process of the coming together of the right kind of people with right type of inputs at the right time for a right purpose.

But P6 does not propose a ready made solution. It just points to the six important aspects of co-creation that companies have to pay close attention to. P6 is an ideation platform for companies to evolve their own co-creation strategies.

Expert Take On evolving a management framework for social media enabled co-creation: Prof Bill Fischer: Social media and technology-enabled co-creation have the potential to profoundly change the way in which we innovate, and the sources of ideas that we innovate with. At the moment, open-innovation is more typically associated with B2C endeavors, but we are seeing a rapidly growing interest in B2B applications as well.

I have no doubt that the future will be characterized by a much greater acceptance of collaborative innovation in most industries, and will become an “accepted management practice.� My MIT colleague, Eric von Hippel, who is on the faculty members of the IMD-MIT partnership program, Driving Strategic Innovation, has authored a book entitled Democratizing Innovation which The Co-creation Roadmap 32

I believe really captures the essence of open innovation.

What we are really doing is opening-up participation in the innovation process to a variety of non-traditional partners who can bring new ideas and insights to the task at hand. I suspect that as the “Facebook generation” kids become assimilated into the industrial workforce, reliance upon collaborative innovation will become second-nature and we will never really experience the sort of formalization process that accompanied “lean,” or Just In Time. Truly “democratic innovation” should benefit us all.

The Co-creation Roadmap 33

The Co-creation Roadmap 34

Priority

The Co-creation Roadmap 35

Chapter 3

Priority The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se. Realizing it (shared value) will require leaders and managers to develop new skills and knowledge—such as a far deeper appreciation of societal needs.

Michael Porter, Management Guru

Professor C K Prahalad often pointed out that companies dramatically fail to understand what external stakeholders – say, customers – consider as value, especially when they themselves decide what is good for customers. “Co-creation is all about sharing and empowering. People are not empowered if they have no way of influencing how we can work together towards a common goal,” he emphasized.

Co-creation, like mass production, concerns with generating value - economical, social, environmental, etc. However, in co-creation, the value that is to be co-created gets co-defined by all stakeholders.

Co-creation is a business imperative because co-definition is. The first Copenhagen Co-creation Summit, organized by Danish Design Association in 2009, to kick start a proactive dialogue on co-creation, produced a list of challenges busiThe Co-creation Roadmap 36

nesses currently face. Among them, the most important and fundamental challenge, one can argue, pertains to: “How can we know, what is the common good?” In other words, what is good for internal as well as external stakeholders?

From desired to desirable Identifying and achieving the common good value – value for all – is what differentiates co-creation from other forms of unilateral approaches to conception or production. When companies engage society in defining the value, it can convert the ‘internally-desired’ objectives into ‘socially-desirable’ goals – the common good. The co-defined goals, naturally gain ‘the social license’ – that is, the implicit and informal support from all informal quarters of the society, and enlist maximum participation from the fans and followers of social media platforms. In contrast, when the objective – the end value - is defined solely by, of, and for internal stakeholders, ignoring the common good, the project fails.

The business priorities and social priorities should meet to make co-creation effective. The meeting grounds – the areas of mutual interest of both business and society, can be termed as ‘co-creation hot spots’. They are the cerebral and emotional spaces for business and society to meet, converse, and jointly define the common good value.

One of the most famous social co-creation stories of recent times, the Betacup Challenge, sponsored by Starbucks, found ‘environment-friendliness’ as one of its co-creation hot spots.

Because it addressed the business interests of Starbucks as well as the priorities of its stakeholders. Annually, over three billion Starbucks paper cups go to the dumps in the US, and therefore, the company was in a need to find a sustainable dispensing solution. The company also identified that “from our customers’ standpoint, the cup is our No. 1 environmenThe Co-creation Roadmap 37

tal liability,” says Mr Jim Hanna, Director of Environmental Impact, Starbucks. (In reality, the supply chain of Starbucks is causing more damage to environment.)

Since eliminating or reducing the use of paper cup was identified as a common good value, meeting the priorities of both the business as well as the community, Starbucks launched International Betacup Contest on April 1, 2010 (which ended on June 15, 2010). It became a huge success.

The campaign allowed business and society jointly explore the scope for new value creation in terms of new products, and service practices. The betacup challenge succeeded in “generating 430 ideas along with over 5,000 comments and a further 10,000,000 media impressions as people discussed the ideas over a two month period”.

Step 1: Identify Co-Creation Hot Spots Business priority “What we learned: social media starts with brand priorities…

It is all about what makes sense for each brand. What are the priorities, and what are the tools that support their goals?” succinctly puts Mr Brian Snyder, Senior Manager, Interactive Communications, Whirlpool, the world’s largest manufacturer of home appliances. Whirlpool monitors customer interactions, trends, discussions, suggestions, opinions, and of course, complaints around its brands such as Maytag, Jenn-Air, Amana, KitchenAid, Bauknecht, Brastemp, and Consul.

Each of Whirlpool’s brands has a community manager, and a brand manager. While, the community managers engage with fans and followers online, the company lets the brand managers to set brand priorities that act as an anchor for the conversations and collaborations around brands.

Successful social media-enabled co-creation projects are The Co-creation Roadmap 38

initiated with one or more business priorities in mind. Nike’s NikeID, Dell’s Ideastorm, Starbucks’ Mystarbucks, Puma’s, Peace.Puma, GE’s Ecomagination, and Apple Inc’s portals for co-creation of iPad or iPhone Apps, all have different business and brand priorities.

For one company, the priority could be about enhancing its product’s functionality. Therefore it could initiate co-creation projects to source more product ideas. And for another, the priority could be enhancing its corporate social responsibility - it could try to co-create a social or environmental value.

It is also possible that the business priorities of the same company can be different at different stages of its growth.

Writes, Nike’s CEO, Mark Parker, in his 2010 CEO letter, “In the early days, our “systems” consisted of only those things that helped us build better shoes and shirts, and ads and events.

We are, after all, a consumer products company. It took us a while, but we finally figured out that we could apply these two core competencies — design and innovation — to bring about environmental, labor and social change. We opened the aperture of our lens and discovered our potential to have a positive influence on waste reduction, climate change, managing natural resources, renewable energy and factory conditions.”

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The RISE of Co-creation Social media is not a ‘nice to have’ investment or a public relation activity. It demands huge time, money and skills. Also, it is a long-term, community-driven process. Hence, companies should focus on the areas that are strategically important for the business, in the long run.

Broadly, the business or brand priorities can be brought under the R.I.S.E category: revenue generation, innovation, support to stakeholders, and evangelism.

Revenue generation: NikeID, for instance, helps Nike generate revenue by engaging customers in co-creating unique product variants, using product configurators. The company had announced that for the fiscal year 2010, its web sales increased by 25% to about US $ 260 million, and sales from the product configurator alone surpassed US $ 100 million.

Innovation: Dell’s IdeaStorm, launched in 2007, as a cocreation initiative on generating innovative ideas for new products, has so far (till mid-2011) brought over 15,000 ideas for the company. It has implemented over 400 of them.

Starbucks’ Mystarbucks Idea, a platform that enables the customers and other stakeholders submit, view and rate business ideas. The project is generating hundreds of ideas every week for Starbucks. The company also lists the actions taken on the submitted ideas.

Support to stakeholders: Hyundai’s After Market is an official forum and community site that provides support for the car owners. The customers post suggestions, issues and bugs, and get solutions from other users, company representatives, OEM vendors. After Market receives “over 30,000 unique hits per month, and has mobilised over 500,000 posts”.

Evangelism: GE’s Ecomagination and Puma’s Peace.Puma play the role of promoting or evangelising the cause of green The Co-creation Roadmap 40

power and global peace respectively. Billionheartsbeating is a social platform of India’s Apollo Hospitals group that raise awareness about cardiac health among the public.

Stakeholders’ Priorities Companies can map stakeholder groups who might be the potential co-creation participants for the identified business or brand prirorities. For instance, if revenue generation is the internal priority of a company, then its customers could be one among the relevant or critical stakeholder groups. Because customers might be currently experiencing some pain points in the areas of product usage and they might be keen to engage with the company in bettering the products. And better products means more sales revenue.

South Korea’s LG Electronics identifies its business priorities, and also the critical stakeholder groups for each of its priorities in the following fashion: Customers - Increase customer satisfaction - Supply safe products and services - Fair marketing, provide accurate information - Protect customer privacy Shareholders and investors - Publish transparent management information - Enhance investment value through increased efficiency of management - Improve corporate value through CSR activities Business Partners - Fair trade - Prompt Payments - Support partner activities related to CSR The Co-creation Roadmap 41

Community - Minimize workplace impact on the immediate environment and its vicinity - Respect local cultures and customs Promote notion of giving back to the community - Hire local residents and contribute to local economies Employees - Protect human rights and respect diversity - Fair evaluation and rewards - Continuous career development opportunities - Secure safe and healthy work environments Federal/Local Governments - Comply with all regulations - Pay taxes Civic Groups/International Organizations - Reduce greenhouse gas emissions - Participate in and support efforts to address global social issues Companies can understand the priorities of stakeholder groups, by listening to them, and interacting with them. Listening to conversations helps companies source ideas, and take responsible decisions. Naturally, companies that enjoy real social presence, that is, companies that are actively listening and are genuinely sensitive to the societal needs, can effectively figure out the co-creation hot spots, where the business priorities and societal priorities shake hand.

Companies are investing in social media search tools like Radian6, and extensively use Google Search, Twitter Search, to know the high priority areas – the ‘trending’ topics of the target audience.

The instance of the stakeholder engagement of Symantec, a software company, offers great insights into the process The Co-creation Roadmap 42

of identifying co-creation hot spots. Symantec identifies the co-creation hot spots or what it calls the ‘high priority areas’ through various engagement exercises such as collecting feedback via online and offline means. The company, then, compiled a comprehensive list of economic, environmental, social, and governance issues, such as “carbon footprint”, “international activities”, “supply chain accountability”, and “diversity performance” as the areas its stakeholders want the company to address more directly.

Symantec had reviewed a range of documents and sources reflecting aggregate stakeholder interests and concerns to assign a stakeholder “score” to each issue. “For example, we considered questions posed in sustainability ratings and rankings questionnaires, responses to customer and employee satisfaction surveys, media coverage, peer reports, and industry and trade association documents, among other materials. At the same time, we evaluated each issue from the perspective of its potential impact on Symantec, taking into account possible effects on sales, brand and reputation, employees, risk management, cost savings, and ability to deliver products and services. Upon compiling an initial matrix, we sought external stakeholder input by engaging our stake holder advisory council to review the draft results and provide their feedback. We finalized the ranking of the issues based on their input and recommendations from Symantec’s cross-functional reporting team”.

The company comes up with the following co-creation hot spots for the immediate future: climate & energy; customer satisfaction; securing information (comprising online safety, data protection and privacy, and cybercrime prevention); diversity & inclusion; human rights (inclusive of responsible sourcing as well as privacy and freedom of expression); and talent retention.

It should also be noted that the list of co-creation hot spots is not static. It may change from time to time. In the case of Symantec, the ratings of its stakeholders changed in twelve The Co-creation Roadmap 43

months. Governance issues such as board structure and executive compensation, though certainly still on stakeholders’ lists of critical corporate responsibility attributes, figured less prominently in 2009 than they did in 2008. And human rights concerns, both generally with regard to supply chain accountability and, specifically for the IT sector, freedom of expression and privacy, rose much higher in 2009.

Having identified the hot spots, Symantec has a clear road map for co-creation and the value it should aim for with its stakeholders. The company’s co-creation initiative, Norton Online Family, was based on the hot spots of “online security” of the children. The Norton Online Family is an online safety service that encourages forthright and open communication between parents and children about responsible Internet usage.

This community has won several prestigious awards including the Gold Recipient in the Online Resources category for the 2010 Mom’s Choice Awards, which honor excellence in familyfriendly media, products and services available in the US. Initial Steps in identifying the co-creation hot spots Co-creation hot spots are the meeting points of your internal priorities and society’s priorities. Come up with a list of your business or brand priorities. Map the stakeholder groups whose participation would be critical for co-creating solutions in your priority areas. Listen to them and engage them to know their own priorities, and identify the mutual interest areas, the cocreation hot spots.

Companies use a number of tools to listen to what their customers are talking about the brand. Raidan6, a prominent social listening tool, enables companies to monitor the social media space to find conversations that are happening around the brand. You could scan through media reports, conduct surveys, setup social media monitoring tools to know the areas The Co-creation Roadmap 44

that are very important for the customers, suppliers or any other critical stakeholder groups.

But as suggested, it is important that you first identify your own business or brand priorities. Mostly, your business priorities could be brought under the R.I.S.E category that features revenue generation, idea generation, support generation to stakeholders or evangelism for a strategic cause.

Once you are clear with business priorities, it becomes easy for you to identify the stakeholders whose participation is going to be critical to make the co-creation work.

Encourage your staff to engage with the stakeholders in conversations with the members of critical stakeholder groups using social media platforms. Your team could blog, tweet on the co-creation hot spots and network with them.

It is better to begin with top most co-creation hot spots and enage with a particular stakeholder group. For instance, Nokia India chose to co-create new product design ideas with student groups. It partnered with a Bengaluru-based design institute, and set up a design studio exclusively for the students. Nokia’s design engineers mentored the students to create prototypes of about sixteen design product concepts. The students cocreated several design concepts.

Expert Take On the factors that drive co-creation: Prof Bill Fischer: There are three driving forces that strike me as being central to all of this: 1. an imperative of speed: the clock speed of industrial change is accelerating to a level where it has become obvious that “we can’t do it all by ourselves,” and/or “we can’t do it fast enough if we rely only upon ourselves.”

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And, with a morphing of industry boundaries, change is not only happening faster but it is coming at us from all directions. In many instances, the sources of challenges are from so far outside of our traditional ways of working that they might as well be “invisible.”

2. the acceleration of technologies (particularly information technology) that have both created both an awareness of the vibrancy of other people’s ideas and a means of accessing them.

3. globalization: which has profoundly changed our map of the world. The very fact that we are having this conversation is a testament to the power of globalization to put people into a position where they can geographically enlarge their conversational space in the pursuit of new ideas.

I believe that great innovators have always had a curiosity about other people’s ideas and a talent for finding them.

Thomas Edison, for example, was a relentless “idea hunter;” Charles Darwin and Joseph Priestly [one of the discoverers of oxygen], typified the very active informal collaboration that characterized much of 18th and 19th century discovery. Both belonged to highly interactive scientific communities where ideas moved rapidly from correspondent to correspondent, being improved at every step. When corporations became the source of much of our contemporary innovation, a reliance upon internal teams of innovators, a natural preoccupation with making the right R&D investment decisions, a desire to move products from concept to cash faster, and a concern for the protection of “intellectual property”, all conspired, probably unintentionally, to recast the vision The Co-creation Roadmap 46

of corporate innovators from outside of the organization to inside.

Obviously, if you believe in “the idea hunt,” any sort of inward refocusing is unfortunate, because it limits the idea-pool that innovators can draw from. I think, given the evidence of enormous technological progress during the 20th century, it would be presumptuous to say that “companies underachieved by accepting a focus on closed-door innovation,” but, in fact, it’s probably true.

Prof Frank Piller: Customer co-creation has been defined as an active, creative and social process, based on collaboration between producers (retailers) and customers (users) (Piller and Ihl 2009). Customers are actively involved and are taking part in the design of new products or services. Their co-creation activities are performed in an act of company-to-customer interaction which is facilitated by the company. The objective is to utilize the information and capabilities of customers and users for the innovation process.

The main benefit is to enlarge the base of information about needs, applications, and solution technologies that resides in the domain of the customers and users of a product or service. Examples for methods to achieve this objective include: user idea contests, consumer opinion platforms, toolkits for user innovation, mass customization toolkits, and communities for customer co-creation.

On open innovation Prof Frank Piller: I would say truly that closed The Co-creation Roadmap 47

innovation is not possible anyway. All innovation is built on existing knowledge and some form of networking.

But the term: open innovation suggests the building up of dedicated practices to make the connection with the best external knowledge for a given innovation task better and more efficient. So for me, open innovation is not a business imperative, but a set of practices and organizational capabilities to connect with a firm’s periphery for innovation.

On co-creation hot spots Andy Smith: The key point in any community is a common cause or rallying point. In Dragonfly Effect terms: a focused, singular clear goal. There should be no doubt why people are there. If a business is to sponsor a community, they first have to identify that rallying point that is meaningful not just to the company, but to their constituents as well. Further, each party should bring something to the community that adds to its value, and continually renews itself. In investment communities such as StockTwits for example, the company brings the core framework for a discussion about stocks, and real-time access to financial information. The individual members bring their experiences and opinions and the value of the community grows as a result.

Cause-related communities can be great, but they need to ensure that the goal is clear and that there are measurable elements that indicate progress so that the community members can retain their direction and motivation.

World peace is a wonderful, aspirational goal, but it’s achieved one step at a time, one region at a time and that’s how a community’s micro-goals should be established to keep participants engaged.

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On identifying customers’ priorities while taking management decisions Andy Smith: Transparency plays a key role in success in the social space, whether you are a company or an individual. It’s also important for companies to listen to customers and employees when prioritizing what (transparency) ratings to go after.

Standards that matter broadly to external stakeholders (as well as internal rank and file stakeholders) are generally the ones that contribute significantly to the company’s main source of revenue. For example, purchasing only certified free trade beans is important if you are in the business of serving coffee, such as Starbucks, but less relevant if you are a tool and die manufacturer. Similarly, becoming ISO9000 certified is important for the tool and die company, but is not a burning question on the mind of Starbucks customer waiting in line for their latte.

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Participation

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Chapter 4

Participation When we truly grasp the ability to define action and measure it, we can expand the impact of new media beyond P&L. We can adapt business processes, inspire ingenuity, and more effectively compete for the future Brian Solis, Author, Engage

In his book: “Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny”, Amartya Sen says that identities offer “a sense of belonging to a community” and is “a resource, like capital”. Companies can mobilize the ‘social capital’ by promoting communities around people’s identities as ‘citizens’, ‘customers’, ‘professionals’, ‘environmentalists’, ‘social activists’, ‘creative commons’, ‘students’, ‘artists’, etc for strategic business value.

Social capital is getting figured in the integrated ‘one report’ balance sheets of corporates because of its contributions to business valuation. Today, companies are being viewed primarily as a portfolio of co-creation platforms and communities that produce value.

Millward Brown Optimor (MBO), a consulting firm, has put Apple first, ahead of Google, in its list of world’s valuable brands of 2011. In MBO’s estimate, the value of Apple is over The Co-creation Roadmap 52

US$ 150 billion as the firm includes Apple’s community in its valuation. MBO reasons that Apple is not just a company “it is a trinity of platform, content, and device”. MBO also points out that “Apple’s co-creation approach resulted in roughly 350,000 Apple apps, and it added value to the product and the brand...”

The Question of ROI A 2010 McKinsey Report identifies: “Since, co-creation is a two-way process, companies must also provide feedback to stimulate continuing participation and commitment”.

Companies should give equal weightage to their own social media participation: how many ideas do they submit to a third party idea contest? how many comments do they leave to a relevant blog post? how many surveys do they take part? In short, what is their contribution as co-creators?

However, the return on investment of the executive time on social media is the most debated aspect of corporate social strategy. The currently popular social media ROI metrics such as the number of page views, comments, retweets or the fans and followers make sense only to silos: marketing or corporate communication departments. By default, companies engage the marketing or the corporate communication team to manage the social media show. This shows that social media is largely understood as a tool meant for generating business leads and PR buzz.

At the other extreme are companies that consider social media participation as a type of corporate social responsibility - “giving back to society”. However, in reality, social media participation is about “going back to society” to seek ideas to run every aspect of wealth creation and distribution.

However, in the absence of metrics on business benefits of social media, companies do not allocate funds and do not generally allow their staff to participate in social media.

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Despite growing adoption of social media by customers and other key stakeholders, even big corporate houses are not completely ready for social media participation. Companies do not have a system in place that would explore the benefits and threats of social media participation. Many companies choose to discourage the participation of their employees and executives in social media, instead of guiding and governing their social media participation.

In this context, forming an exclusive high level team to harness the power of social media is an important indicator of social co-creation readiness of a company.

It is high time companies created executive positions with co-creation/open innovation mandates. An example comes from Adobe. The company has set up an exclusive department for open innovation, and created a leadership position, “Idea Mentor” to take full responsibility for its co-creation initiatives.

The job of the Idea Mentor is to create an idea platform and champion innovation at all levels within and without the organization. The Idea Mentor directly reports to Adobe’s Chief Technology Officer.

Step 2: Setup a Co-creation Board As the recent business valuation trends prove, the function of listening to, and participating in, social media conversations is too strategic and central to all business operations to leave it to the purview of any one particular department. Therefore companies need to form a multi-disciplinary team.

To tap the wisdom of crowds, companies should establish a social media/co-creation team, “co-creation board”, headed, advisably by the Chief Executive Officer, and represented by people from across the organization. The multi-disciplinary co-creation board can collectively address some of these chalThe Co-creation Roadmap 54

lenges: How to let the people who make up the corporation respond to people who make up the market?

How to define ROI? How to evolve corporate social strategies?

How to create policies and systems of social participation?

How to provide training for people to make use of the tools?

How to prevent social media from bankrupting employee’s managerial bandwidth?

Today, the rate of participation of C-suite executives in corporate social interactions is almost negligible. Going by a 2011 study by Altimeter, a business consulting company, only The Co-creation Roadmap 55

7% of the positions of “corporate social strategists” are held

by Vice Presidents. In many organizations, the managers of marketing or communication departments also double up as corporate social strategists, who provide “leadership, road map definition, and governance” and directly influence “the spending on technology vendors and service agencies”.

Organizational Models In terms of organization of the board, it could be hub and spoke or decentralized. Mr Jeremiah Owing of Altimeter Group cites that there can be as many as five organizational types, including: organic, where “Social efforts bubble up from the edges of the company, much like Sun Micrososystems, which encourages a blogging culture for all employees”; Centralized, where “one department (usually corporate communications) controls all social efforts”; Coordinated, wherein “a crossfunctional team sits in centralized position and helps various nodes such as business units, product teams, or geographies be successful through training, education, support,”; Multiple Hub & Spoke, where ‘companies within companies’ act nearly autonomously from each other under a common brand”, and Holistic, where “everyone is in customer service and support and anyone who wants to be social is enabled.”

Though there are pros and cons attached to each of this model, the objective is to encourage both internal and external participation that would result in meaningful conversations and collaborations. Let us consider how different organizations have different organizational models for social media and co-creation.

Intel: Intel has a social media centre of excellence to provide guidance, policies, and company-wide tools to help Intel employees interact using social media. The centre of excellence created a comprehensive set of social media policies that are The Co-creation Roadmap 56

available in over 35 languages designed to help everyone use social media in a responsible way. It also developed a curriculum and certification program for employees: Digital IQ. If an Intel employee wants to know how to blog on behalf of Intel, he or she has just to watch a 30-minute training video developed by Intel’s social media team. Out of Intel’s 80,000-odd employees, over 1,000 employees have undergone the training, and they tweet using more than 250 accounts.

Intel’s centre of excellence had played a key role forging relationships with all functional departments, apart from legal, public relations, and marketing. According to Mr Bryan Rhoads, the Digital Strategist of Intel, the objective of the centre, is “getting as many voices as possible involved in the company’s social media efforts.”

Dell: Dell has created a social media support team with about 26 employees spread across the U.S., China and Latin America.

Using various monitoring tools, the social media support team listens to the conversations that take place across Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networking sites and forums.

Dell has a Social Media Listening Command Center, which monitors “more than 25,000 Dell-related topic posts every day”. Dell used to support its customers in Twitter through individuals like @ChrisBatDell, @BillatDell and many others but recently, the company formalised and rolled out centralized accounts: @DellCares and @DellOutlet. @DellOutlet enjoys a whooping 1.5 million followers (March 2011).

P&G: P&G has an External Business Development team that ensures that the ideas and solutions submitted to PGconnectdevelop.com, its open innovation portal, are shared with individuals within the company who are best suited to evaluate them. The company designates a representative, who serves as a contact or an interface between the company and each innovator. The executives assign the submissions to the right The Co-creation Roadmap 57

person or team within P&G, and responds to the innovators.

The representative is trained to judge who within the organization would be best suited to review solutions. The portal itself is designed in such a way that all of the business units within P&G can access the innovations that are received through the portal.

Ebay has created a Center of Excellence that provides resources to business functions like HR, strategy, corporate communicaiton, and also to production. They provide social strategy, alignment of roadmaps and plans, and analytics.

Ford: Ford formed a social media and co-creation team: Social Media Action & Response Team (SMART) in 2008 to monitor the online space for opportunities to help customers.

The core team has six people across the company dedicated to social media, while another 20 executives and managers take part in social media as part of their wider roles. Ford is active on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, etc.

JetBlue: JetBlue constituted a working group of subject matter experts from a variety of departments spanning communications, marketing, customer relations, and operations who engage directly with customers. JetBlue has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and runs Blue Tales, a branded blog.

Whirlpool: Whirlpool employs three full time staff and engages about 300-400 people - its total head count is 71,000 - representing many departments such as customer care, public relations, digital marketing, manufacturing, etc, to monitor customer interactions, trends, discussions, suggestions, opinions, and of course, complaints. The staff who monitor social media are known as “digital detectives�, who measure its social media participation: number of responses, number of consumers contacted, time elapsed between complaint of comment and contacting the customer, length of interaction, the size of the online general conversation about appliances, etc.

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The company adds product managers to the feedback loop so that they could see suggestions and incorporate them in their next products and to make improvements to existing products.

Co-creation Champions In all of the organizational models, the linchpins are the co-creation champions, internal staffs or outside experts, who facilitate conversations and collaborations on behalf of either the organization or the community. Intel calls its champions Intel Insiders, IBM, “jammers”, while Starbucks titles them “Idea Partners”.

The primary role of the co-creation champions is to engage the participants, spending time for them, understanding them, coming up with right type of incentives for them. The champions could represent a particular interest group, cause, or domain. They could be individuals or organizations, who can facilitate the conversation between people within the organization and people outside the organization. To be successful champions should have a collaborative attitude, communication skills, and product expertise.

Prof Venkat Ramaswamy in his blog writes about the key role played by the co-creation champions - who serve as a bridge between internal members of a company and its fans - in the co-creation success, citing the case of Starbucks. Starbucks launched My Starbucks Idea, a co-creation platform in 2008.

The company’s champions: ‘Idea Partners’, build communities, by responding to blog comments, Facebook queries, submission of ideas by customers at MyStarbucks Idea, the flagship co-creation platform of the company. The Idea Partners engage with customers directly, and regularly. They take part in conversations not only with external participants but also with the internal team on behalf of the community.

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Prof Ramaswamy writes: “Starbucks has been successful because it has dedicated employees called Idea Partners who carry and champion the reviewed and chosen ideas inside the organization, providing “feedback on feedback” (i.e. replying to and discussing suggestions) and having a continuous conversation with customers.

For example, a Starbucks Idea Partner, Katie Thomson, a registered dietician and senior nutritionist at Starbucks, engaged in dialogue not only with the customer community on the new food offerings they wanted, but also with the company’s supply chain on ingredient changes that were not only about healthier options but also “aroma reducing”, so as not to interfere with the smell of coffee and detract from the Starbucks brand’s core “coffeehouse experience” which it was trying to reinvigorate at the same time.

By also using the same platform to spur dialogue internally (just like on the supplier side), Starbucks has been able to engage other “functions” inside the organization, connecting them with external customer insights, as well as those from baristas in its stores who are also encouraged to participate in problem solving implementation challenges.”

Initial steps in setting up a Co-creation Board Before trying to streamline, structure, and manage co-creation formally, companies need to be strongly committed to social co-creation. We see companies like Dell and Nike demonstrating excellence in social media-enabled co-creation. They have senior people heading their social media operations. They have The Co-creation Roadmap 60

dedicated infrastructure, equipped with robust social media monitoring tools, analysis, social intelligence software, well defined policies, trained man power, and customer empowering web features.

However, the key drivers of these initiatives are the genuine commitment of people at the top to explore new ways of democratising business and creating a win-win for all.

Get the participation of chief and senior executives and establish a co-creation board with the participation of people from multiple disciplines: from manufacturing to marketing.

Define the roles and goals of co-creation board. Make sure that things like social media training, designing of socia media guidelines, and mentoring are going to be the important tasks of the co-creation board.

In the absence of a drive from the ranks of the chief executives, it would be difficult to form even a mailing list that costs almost nothing. And the participation will be zero if there are no consistent effort in the forms of workshops, orientation programs to internally market the idea of co-creation and how it can help them solve their day-to-day problems. You could consider creating an exclusive position within the organization with the mandate to drive the participation of senior executives and staff in the activities, discussions of the co-creation board.

The co-creation board should be headed not by the manager of a particular department but desirably by the chief executive.

Organizations can also engage external experts in evolving the social media goals, co-creation projects, and importantly in formulating the desirable goals of the co-creation board.

Companies can engage experts, celebrities and influencers to act as champions, and represent them in the social media space. The sports brand, Puma launched PUMA.Peace, a corporate social responsibility initiative, and partners with Jeremy Gilley, a film maker, who runs Peace One Day, a not-for profit organisation to raise awareness of UN International Day of The Co-creation Roadmap 61

Peace (21st September), an annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence.

PUMA.Peace and Peace One Day launched ‘One day One goal’ to conduct goodwill football matches all over the world on the international peace day. In 2010, over 3,000 One Day One Goal commemorative football matches were played around the globe on or around Peace Day in every UN Member State. And this would not have been possible without Puma partnering with Jeremy, the co-creation champion, who has a passion, and influence in the particular community.

Expert Take On setting up co-creation boards with representations from multiple functional heads Prof Frank Piller: There are still very few companies that have a co-creation team in place, many don’t even have one functional manager taking care of the initiative. But this will change, and I that the first (mover) companies are building interdisciplinary teams.

On engaging lead users Prof Frank Piller: I would like to quote Eric von Hippel, who is the originator of the “Lead User” concept, which I believe is at the very essence of open-innovation. “Lead Users” are non-traditional partners who are struggling with the very issues that an innovating firm will likely face in the future, even if they are not yet aware of it.

“Lead Users” are before early adopters, and may never actually become customers, but they can contribute to the innovating firm’s insights and projects, if they are The Co-creation Roadmap 62

allowed to, out of a love for the game and a need to overcome frustrations with existing offerings.

Research, originating by the path-breaking work by Eric von Hippel at the MIT has shown that many commercially important products or processes are initially thought of by innovative users rather than by manufactures. Especially when markets are fast-paced or turbulent, the lead users face specific needs ahead of the general market participants.

Lead users are characterized as users who (1) face the needs that will become general in a marketplace, much earlier before the bulk of that marketplace encounters them; and (2) are positioned to benefit significantly by obtaining a solution for those needs.

But lead users are no average customers or users. There are only very few lead users. Average customers are in general neither innovative nor do they want to engage in innovation.Hence, it is the task of a company to identify these lead users by specific search and screening methods. There is not enough space here to describe these methods, but they are very well documented (look atEric von Hippel’s MIT homepage for some examples).

Brian Millar: Sci Fi writer William Gibson said that the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.

Co-creation means going out and looking for it, finding the people who are using products - or abusing them, or rejecting them - in a way which the rest of us one day might adopt.

We’ve spent over ten years building up an online The Co-creation Roadmap 63

global network of creative thinkers and doers. Classic market researchers look for the people in the middle of the bell curve - your typical customer. We look for extremists. Sense Worldwide has recruited a pagan witch, a newspaper editor, an airline pilot, a TV mogul, and a prescription drug addict.

Case Example on Corporate Social Media Readiness Today, Dell is widely appreciated for its excellence in creating a social presence and pushing the frontiers of co-creation. It listens to 25,000 daily conversations that mention the brand. For some of these pioneering initiatives, Dell won the Open Leadership Award of Altimeter Group, a business consultancy promoted by Charlene Li, author of Open Leadership. The citation reads that Dell is “continually pushing the boundaries of social business by pushing engagement into all areas of their business practice.” Cumulatively, Dell had received more than 170,000 customer ratings and reviews on various online platforms across 62 countries, while its main Facebook Page has more than 360,000 fans.

However till 2005, Dell was a laggard in social media.

Its social media policy used to be, in the words of one its spokespersons, “look, don’t touch”. Jeff Jarvis, an ordinary Dell customer became famous for his series of Dell Hell blog posts that were about the company’s poor customer service. In one of his posts, Jarvis gave “some friendly and free advice about these blog things” to Dell, which is relevant to all companies, even today, and word for word. He wrote: “1. Read blogs. Go to Technorati, Icerocket, Google, The Co-creation Roadmap 64

Bloglines, Pubsub, and search for Dell and read what they’re saying about you. Get it out of your head that these are “bloggers,” just strange beasts blathering. These are consumers, your marketplace, your customers — if you’re lucky. They are just people. You surely spend a fortune on consumer research, on surveys and focus groups and think tanks to find out what people are thinking. On blogs, they will tell you for free. All you have to do is read them. All you have to do is listen.

2. Talk with your consumers. One of your executives said you have a look-don’t-touch policy regarding blogs. How insulting that is: You ignore your consumers? You act as if we’re not here? How would you like it if you gave someone thousands of dollars and they ignored you?

You’re not used to being treated that way. Neither are we.

It’s just rude. These bloggers care enough to talk about your products and service and brands. The least you can do is engage them and join the conversation. You will learn more than any think tank can ever tell you about what the market thinks of your products. But go to the next step: Ask ask your consumers what they think you should do. You’ll end up with better products and you’ll do a better job selling them to more satisfied customers who can even help each other, if you’ll let them. It’s good business, gentlemen.

3. Blog. If Microsoft and Sun and even GM, fercapitalismsake, can have their smartest blogging. So why shouldn’t you? Or the better question: Why should you? Because it’s a fad? No. Because it will make you cool with your kids? No. Blog because it shows that you are open and unafraid — no, eager — to engage your consumers, eye-to-eye.

4. Listen to all your bad press and bad blog PR and consumer dissatisfaction and falling stock price and to The Co-creation Roadmap 65

.

the failure of your low-price strategy and use that blog to admit that you have a problem. Then show us how you are going to improve quality and let us help. Make better computers and hire customer service people who serve customers.

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Problem

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Chapter 5

Problem From my perspective, “problem places” are a core element of open innovation.

Prof Frank Piller, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Companies in Quebec, a province in East-Central Canada, went ahead hosting what is perhaps the world’s first “Problem Conference” in 2010. The Problem Conference had asked businesses to talk about the problems they were facing, instead of their expertise, capabilities, know-hows, track records, etc. The participants were representatives from about 50 companies and institutions in Quebec.

The problems submitted by the companies ranged from innovation problems (of economic, organizational, social, or political in nature), industrial problems (new technology development or in product design or improvement), large scale problems (an international organization facing a number of complex innovation issues).

The Conference featured “information walls” (problem walls) that were used to post technical data sheets, graphics and other The Co-creation Roadmap 68

materials that described the problems. The participants discussed with people from companies to understand the broader or micro aspects of their problems. After gaining a thorough understanding, they offered solutions.

Prof Frank Piller, who was instrumental in organizing the Problem Conference, was thrilled to find the enthusiastic participation of “society” in solving business problems. He writes that the companies that participated in the Conference gained: Many new contacts Networked outside the “normal” network Generated new ideas for applications Gained a better understanding of the problem Initiated research contracts Identified more cost effective solutions (not better, but much cheaper) “On a higher level, this conference is part of a much larger general trend: The development of problem places – communities and platforms where problems are being posted looking for potential seekers, enabling un-obvious connections in many perspectives,” Piller observes.

Benefits of Problem Broadcast The ability to understand and willingness to be open about the problems are the key managerial traits that are needed for co-creation. It is not the ‘know-how’ but “tell how” attitude that is the hallmark of co-creation because it is all about seeking solutions, and not selling expertise. Only ‘fools’ can truely co-create. The ‘know-how’ companies, on the other hand, would end up reducing a co-creation project into a PR stunt.

Social media offers the opportunity to ask for help. But most companies are not used to asking. They fear of losing the corThe Co-creation Roadmap 69

porate identity that is so strongly built around “know-how” expertise. One of the recent examples, is British Petroleum, the world’s fifth largest company. The oil spill led 4,900,000 barrels of crude oil flow for three months in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. Before the leak was stopped, the company was spilling over 50,000 barrels into the ocean every single day.

Alarmed at the enormity of the crisis, people wrote e-mails, offered their suggestions through open innovation platforms like InnoCentive - there were about 5000 suggestions per day on average from “outsiders” who wanted to help the company stop the leak and protect the environment.

However, BP was busy engaging its public relations team to ‘save’ its brand. It had spent more than $90 million on PR in the first three months of the spill, putting out advertisements in print media about its cleaning up initiatives. Meanwhile, the press kept reporting that BP was not honest in its communications. BP’s PR team used social media - Twitter, as push-media.

It tweeted but not responded to tweets.

“BP would not answer technical questions from our Solvers and would not agree to review proposed solutions,” said Dwayne Spradlin, Head, InnoCentive, which sought ideas from its community of solvers to stop the spill. “BP did eventually open up its own call for ideas and proposals. But their approach was far too broad, unfocused, and lacked sufficient transparency (particularly related to accurate technical data at the spill site) to elicit truly valuable submissions. Some argued they were simply responding to media pressure. Regardless, it was likely too little and too late to be make any real difference.”

BP episode showed how corporates are unprepared for open innovation and lack corporate social strategy of sharing problems as challenges, and seeking solutions from society, from peers, from regulators, from academia, and communities.

Open Corporate The Co-creation Roadmap 70

Innumerable studies say that knowledge and business insights are widely but unevenly distributed in society. There is no guarantee that a company can easily identify who will bring the next big idea to your business. Hence, companies should be open to engaging with the crowd - in addition to employees and customers, in co-defining, and co-creating value.

Mr Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, says many significant inventions in the world of business and science in the past had come from “open-source/academic, collaborative networks” and “idea-sharing amateurs” than from the competitive sphere of the marketplace: the “private corporation or solo entrepreneur”, and “market place of interconnected private firms” Mr Johnson had analyzed 300 of the most influential innovations in science, commerce and technology — from the discovery of vacuums to the vacuum tube to the vacuum cleaner, and concludes: “The conventional wisdom, of course, is that market forces drive innovation, with businesses propelled to new ideas by the promise of financial reward. And yet even in the heyday of industrial and consumer capitalism over the last two centuries, the fourth quadrant (amateurs) turns out to have generated more world-changing ideas than the competitive sphere of the marketplace,” he concludes.

A comprehensive study titled, The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving, finds that the broadcast of problem information to outside scientists results in about 30% resolution rate for scientific problems that had previously remained unsolved inside the R & D laboratories of well-known science-driven firms. The authors analysed that the data about disclosing of problem information of about 166 discrete scientific problems to a large group of outside solvers - 80,000 independent scientists from over 150 countries. “The approach solved onethird of a sample of problems that large and well-known R & The Co-creation Roadmap 71

D-intensive firms had been unsuccessful in solving internally,” they realized.

Only open corporates can solicit the participation of the crowd. However, with the emergence of co-creation communities, promoted by companies like Innocentive, the culture of broadcasting problem is proving to be effective for business in putting social media into innovative use.

Step 3: Create a Problem Wall Companies can now turn to online customer forums or social media sites to know the problems in connection with their products or business behaviour. Facebook and Twitter, often, serve as spaces for the public to post the problems. However, proactively, companies can create an exclusive Problem Wall an external website to encourage the stakeholders to come up with the problems and engage with the company in a dialogue.

Shell, a global giant in energy and petrochemical, with operations in about 90 countries, was the very first global conglomerate to solicit information on the problems from the public.

In 1998, it launched Tell Shell, which has now become Shell Dialogues, to encourage open debate. Shell Dialogue has a ‘debating chamber’ where the external stakeholders can have their say on Shell’s operations.

Recommendedly, companies can create a micro site or a web page in the existing corporate site to inform the public the problems related to the particular business. Having such a page can drive home the point that the company is culturally ready for open innovation.

When the US President Mr Barack Obama announced the Open Government Initiative in 2009, he made sure that White House.gov and the websites of all other government departments had a open government dashboard that can be located by the public by adding “/open” to the web address.

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Extending the logic, companies can have a “/problems” section to their website and list the problems they believe can be solved by applying co-creation principles. It should encourage dialogues on the problems. Creating the problem wall could mark a new shift in internal and corporate social engagement.

It would create a culture based on “problem broadcast” and collaboration.

Communicating problems can soon become a norm of the day. One of the best examples of how problem walls can be converted into co-creation platforms comes from The Procter & Gambles’ Pgconnectdevelop.com. It is an open innovation portal, which publishes the descriptions of the problems the company faces, chiefly, in its research and product development domain. P&G claims that over 50 percent of its product initiatives at the company involve significant collaboration with outside innovators.

Anyone can browse P&G’s current needs. The company The Co-creation Roadmap 73

describes its problems in terms of technology, production, research, etc and crowd sources ideas that address a big, unmet consumer need. The portal offers new benefits to existing P&G products. Mr Bruce Brown, Chief Technology Officer, says that the P&G’s co-creation strategy already has resulted in more than 1,000 active agreements. “Types of innovations vary widely, as do the sources and business models. Inbound or out, know-how or new products, examples of our success are as diverse as our product categories. We are interested in all types of high-quality, on-strategy business partners, from individual inventors or entrepreneurs to smaller companies and those listed in the Fortune 500 — even competitors.”

Initial Steps in Creating a Problem Wall The Problem Wall is a company designated space - a digital platform like a website or portal - that is used by companies and stakeholders to post problems. This dedicated public website to provide descriptions about its problems, to encourage stakeholders to raise issues. Companies can talk about what it is doing to solve them, and what ways people can participate in the problem solving process.

Before going public with the problem wall, companies can open one for internal co-creation. An Intranet problem wall can encourage employees to post, for instance, the bugs or defects of the products or services.

Organizations can let its people choose the problems in their respective functions or roles that could be put out for social co-creation. Ms Gisela Jönsson, a participant of an idea contest site, Management Innovation Exchange, proposes: “Instead of organizing people into “functions” we may take a cue from some of the greatest games, and organize around “quests”. That may sound very designed, but what it means is ad hoc, problem centric organization in which people are The Co-creation Roadmap 74

allowed to organize themselves around what they perceive to be meaningful, important problems in need of solving.�

Expert Take On corporates not being open about problems Prof Frank Piller: This [not being open about problems] indeed is one of the largest challenges we see in the field today. Many companies know about the tools or methods to co-create, but they are not ready internally, to exploit the knowledge generation with their customers and users.

This is a field where I believe we also need more research.

Firms need more information and better guidance on how to assess whether their organization and branch is suited for customer co-creation. This information is crucial in order to build specific competences that aid firms in identifying opportunities and ultimately in using the right method. Managers need a clear picture of their own organizational settings and capabilities before being able to answer important questions during the implementation of one’s own customer integration initiative. This could include answers to questions like: How do innovation projects have to be reorganized?

Which kinds of projects are suited for customer integration? and How do the internal development processes have to be adjusted in order to allow optimal customer integration?

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Project

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Chapter 6

Project “At root, the logic of open innovation is based on a landscape of abundant knowledge, which must be used readily if it is to provide value to the company” Henry William Chesbrough, author, Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology In the P6 roadmap of co-creation, companies begin the journey with identifying co-creation hot spots. They actively participate in social media conversations and collaborations with their customers, suppliers, media, and other external stakeholders. Internally or externally, they set up problem walls for stakeholders to post the problems for co-creation.

However, the step that formally initiates co-creation is designing of a co-creation project: an idea contest, developer challenge, etc. In short, companies should prompt the stakeholders to take action.

One can find hundreds of examples of how companies tried co-creation and crowd sourcing for centuries. All along companies have realized the benefit of enlisting the support of key external stakeholders such as customers in several ways, involving a variety of partnerships.

In 1936, Toyota received 27,000 contributions from which their corporate logo was designed. The US$ 1 billion MRF, India’s largest tyre manufacturer, had crowd-sourced its muscle man logo, though in a traditional way. The MRF’s advertising

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agency interviewed truck drivers on Indian roads before coming up with the muscle man symbol.

However, co-creation is more than crowd sourcing logos.

There is a need to introduce co-creation in the areas beyond marketing. Co-creation can be used to define business practices, corporate governance, etc. People want to engage themselves in co-creation concerning not just slogan contests of products but also about what goes into the making of the products and even making of the company itself. Companies can partner with them to co-create managerial ideas that govern everything from the boardroom to the shop floor.

Idea Contests versus Configuration Challenges Generally, idea contest is the popular choice for companies seeking new value (new product development, for instance), while configuration challenges are used for co-creating value addition to existing products and services.

For instance, a mobile phone company can ask its fans and followers to submit new product features. Co-creation of new value is almost always a separate, and standalone exercise, not connected with the existing consumption process.

In contrast, configuration challenges are examples of cocreation of value addition, using existing components, under fixed product frameworks. LEGO is highly successful in providing the co-creation experience for its customers. It hands over the building bricks to the customers to create their own structures and objects.

LEGO was a pioneer in mass customization. In 2004, it selected four ‘master builders’ and asked them to develop its next generation robots. Later LEGO formalized its co-creation as an ongoing project, called LEGO Mindstorms, that invite thousands of individual builders and even business entities to help LEGO introduce new product concepts. Many design The Co-creation Roadmap 79

contests follow LEGO’s way of giving the base components online to co-create new product variants.

Configuration Challenges for Value Addition Co-creation projecs that aim for value-addition to a product extensively use the concept of “configuration”, letting the customers arrange components to create their own forms, figures or combinations. Online product configurators help companies and customers co-create new product variants and, in the process, unique experience of production and consumption.

Companies only provide a non-configurable base for customers to play around with new combinations of components, colors, etc. The non-configurable base is used by the participants to build their ideas upon.

Linux, an open source operating system, can be said as a well known case of co-creation of value addition. In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish software engineer, wrote codes for an operating system. He put out his codes and invited other developers to contribute and build upon. Torvalds’ codes - Linux kernel, served as a non-configurable base or a framework, for other programmers to develop the software into a full-fledged operating system. The Linux co-creation project is credited with launching the open source movement in the software industry, to a large extent.

“It (co-creation) is really all about having a non-configurable base,” says Mr Simon Holloway of Bloor Research, one of Europe’s leading IT research, analysis and consultancy organisations. Holloway cites various cases of configuration from different industries - from automotive industry, defence sector, pottery, to prove that all of them offered a non-configurable base product for the stakeholders.

“In the automotive industry, customers are already able to choose options to add to the base models – so this is configuraThe Co-creation Roadmap 80

tion. In the aerospace industry, airlines and defence ministries are able to choose options such as engines, seats, weapon systems – this is configuration. Recently I was visiting a small pottery in England and they offered people the chance to come in on a particular day and put their design on a teapot – this is configuration. If you notice all of these examples, the configuration starts from there being a non-configurable base solution – a car model, an aeroplane or a teapot,” he says.

The configuration wave is catching up with a wide range of industries. There are custom clothing companies that use configurators to let their customers enter their measurement, design their own clothes, and place the order.

There are a number of pure-play co-creation startups that have created new business models around the concept of configuration of products like chocolate, jewelry, T-shirts, etc using a non-configurable base. But established brands like The Co-creation Roadmap 81

Hallmark, M&Ms, and Wrigley too have become popular in the social co-creation space.

At www.MyExtraGum.com, a co-creation site of Wrigley, consumers begin the ordering process by choosing a specific theme and template and personalize the pack by adding a message and photo of their choice. Consumers visit www.MyExtraGum.com and upload photos and messages to celebrate and remember a variety of occasions such as weddings, baby showers, birthdays and vacations among others.

The US-based Local Motors, an automotive player, provides its standard car chassis and sources car design ideas that would go on top of that. Local Motors specifies the target segment that fits the price point, and asks the community of car enthusiasts to design new car models. The company puts the winning design on the common chassis and markets them.

Apple engages its users to co-create mobile applications for iPhone and iPAD. The Apple engineers offer tools like interface builders that enable the participants produce user interface designs using drag and drop features.

Pepsi India’s Your Lays Flavour, a crowd sourcing campaign, aimed to collect the choices of customers in terms of flavours to its products. It attracted about 1.3 million votes for different flavour entries. In India, Lays contest is perhaps the largest crowd sourcing campaign till date.

Idea Contests for New Value Creation In the case of co-creation of new value, there is no product or solution base. Participants have to conceive a new value – product idea or solution.

Here are the descriptions of some of the successful idea and design contests carried out by companies in the recent times: Pepsi launched a marketing campaign in early 2007 which allowed consumers to design the look of a Pepsi can. The winThe Co-creation Roadmap 82

ners received a $10,000 prize, and their artwork was featured on 500 million Pepsi cans around the United States.

In 2008, Cisco Systems launched I-Prize contest and sought the participation of the crowd to create innovative business plans using collaborative technologies. The contest attracted the participation of about 2,500 people from over 104 countries. The winning submission was about a business plan that demonstrated how IP technology could be used to increase energy efficiency effectively.

General Electric is running Ecomagination, a multi-million dollar challenge, to find new, breakthrough ideas to create cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid technologies, and to accelerate the adoption of smart grids.

Adobe conducted Adobe Idol campaign to find new product ideas. The competition generated over 750 participants, and almost 100 idea submissions, 3 of which were actually submitted by Adobe’s Co-Founder.

In 2010, the BMW Group launched the Idea Contest titled “Tomorrow’s Urban Mobility Services” that sought new ideas for mobility services in tomorrow‘s urban areas. BMW asked its fans to submit creative ideas pertaining to innovative services in the area of automotive mobility in cities and metropolitan areas of the future.

Threadless conducts Love Threadless challenges in association with not-for profit organizations to promote various causes. Yahoo! and Edison Nation organised a Make-It-Green contest that sought green product ideas to improve people’s lives and the planet’s environment.

Google conducts Google Code Jam, an annual, global coding contest to write programs to solve tough algorithmic problems.

The Code Jam lets the participants use the programming language of their choice. The winner – Code Jam Champion – wins home the $10,000 top prize.

IBM’ Smarter Planet initiative, launched in 2008, is an idea The Co-creation Roadmap 83

contest project that aims to solve business and societal challenges. It is also one of the largest co-creation initiatives.

Step 5: Design a Co-Creation Project Depending on the need companies can design co-creation contests: configuration/developer challenges (for value addition) or idea contests (for new value creation). The co-creation projects can be run using their own or third-party portals.

Co-creation communities such as Jovoto, Innocentive, etc., invite companies to publish the project descriptions, the type of solutions they seek, benefits of the desirable solution, the methods of taking part in the co-creation contest, the incentives, rules, and etc.

Companies should provide the judging criteria of the expected solution, the problem description, contacts for co-creators.

They should also describe the limitations that the co-creation contributors should take into consideration, and offer manuals or guides to the participants on how to use the specific co-creation platforms or product configurators.

Microsoft’s Imagine Cup helps organisations that are grappling with global problems to co-create solutions, especially with students. The Imagine Cup asks the organizations that initiate co-creation solutions to provide the following details to the students: Description of their organization Description of the focus area of the organization Overview of problem How the solution to be submitted by the contributors should work Technical requirements/restrictions Intended beneficiaries of the solution The Co-creation Roadmap 84

Number of people who are likely to benefit from the solution Number of people who will use the solution Skill level of the people who will use this solution Links to additional information on this problem Additional Notes Judgement Criteria: FEEL Values Companies can provide an overview of the type of value – it could be about creating an economic value or environmental value – the project is trying to co-create. Broadly there could be four types of value addition or value creation: Functional value (adding a functional feature to its products), Economic value (saving cost, for instance), Environmental value (how environmental friendly the solution should be), and Love/human value (the experience part). The co-creators should provide the description of the weightage they give to these value types (FEEL factors, in short) of the proposed solution.

A co-creation project may seek to generate any one or all these types of value. The famous Betacup Challenge sponsored

by Starbucks sought the creation of an environment friendly cup, an environment value. Starbucks did not offer any base product. It did not offer any solution base - no specs!

Starbucks sought new value creation. The Betacup Challenge aimed at generating new ideas and innovations. But the company had to communicate what type of solutions and value it seeks. It provided the prevailing conditions, limitations, and environments in which the proposed solution would be used.

The Betacup Challenge was targeting environmental value, but the Challenge asked the participants to make sure that their The Co-creation Roadmap 85

solution should not overlook the aspects of cost effectiveness (economic value), quality of experience of the customers (love/ human value).

Hence, the ‘co-creation invite’ of Starbucks provided details about the type of other desirable values the solution could have.

The Challenge asked the participants to co-create a solution that addresses these concerns: Reducing waste – how does your idea reduce the number of non-recycled coffee cups thrown away each year?

Resources required – what resources will it take to implement your idea? (money, energy, water, materials, time, etc) New or Existing Capabilities – does your idea use existing technologies or approaches? If not, what must be created or invented to implement your idea?

The whole experience – Alternatives to paper cups are available today but they are not being widely used. How effective is your idea likely to be in achieving its goal.

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The “Toyota Ideas for Good Challenge”, a challenge in which participants are asked to submit an idea using Toyota’s automotive technology for a purpose unrelated to automobiles or Toyota’s business. The Challenge seeks solutions that represent: best re-purposing of Toyota technology, creativity/originality, social relevance and benefit, viability of idea for prototyping, overall presentation, etc. Toyota publishes the weightage points given to all of these aspects.

It is also important for the co-creation project to detail the rules, concerning all aspects of participation. A dedicated website, created for the challenge as a co-creation platform, should mention the rights of challenge entities, general terms and conditions, use of intellectual property, etc.

Input Formats Companies should detail the formats the co-creators can use to present their ideas. As technology stands today, social or digital media support idea exchanges in the following four content formats: Information (textual or visual – audio and video) Design files Engineering drawings & configurations Applications (software) Information in multimedia: Most co-creation projects seek to source ideas from the participants in the form of text, images, audio, video or any other multimedia formats.

Designs (creative inputs): 2D and 3D designs are popular in the co-creation of creative contests such as advertisements, interior designs, product designs, etc. For instance, Threadless. com collects new T-shirt ideas in the form of design files from its community.

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Engineering drawings: In social product development, submission of ideas happens usually in the form of engineering drawings. The participants can create and submit their ideas for a new component, prototype as Computer Aided Design files. Google’s Sketchup, for instance, enables the creation of engineering drawings using simple CAD tools. Many CAD and Product Lifecycle Management companies are incorporating social media features in their product design platforms to enable co-creation within and without the enterprise. Product configurators let customers do product engineering, even if the customers do not have skills to create and exchange engineering drawing tools.

Applications: The developer challenges run by software, mobile and other communication product companies, crowd source applications or Web/Mobile apps. The platforms, in this case, also provide interface builders, development tools, and online databases for customers to co-create apps.

The co-creation should provide descriptions about these forms and formats of idea submissions such as the number of characters in the case of seeking ideas in textual form, the file formats and sizes of photos, sketches and renderings, and videos, etc. Thus, the type of challenges varies in terms of skills and complexity involved in the presentation of ideas.

Initial Steps in Designing a Co-creation Project The wisdom of crowds can co-create more than “consumer experience” at the retail shop. It can also co-create “managerial experience” and democratize business.

A co-creation project involves cost. Thorough planning of the processes, technology & tools, knowledge of users of third-party co-creation communities, are essential for designing a co-creation project. Also, the complexity of contests widely The Co-creation Roadmap 88

varies. The idea contests for crowd sourcing a marketing slogan is easier than partnering with the people to co-create, say, a new management practice, from the perspective of technology.

You could start with idea contests for the marketing of your existing product, and based on your experience, you could try to bring out contests and challenges that seek new managerial value creation or new product development, for instance.

It is also a good idea to conduct quests internally, enlisting the participation of employees, suppliers, and investors, before launching an idea contest that seeks the participation of external stakeholders.

Have the co-creation team assigned to analyse the need for investment in terms of technology, team skills, and evaluation of third-party co-creation communities. Involve the legal department, while deciding the rights of use of solutions generated through co-creation, general terms and conditions, and use of intellectual property.

The co-creation project would backfire if the engagement of the participants is going to be partial. The debacle of one of the crowd sourcing campaigns of Kraft Food, the world’s second largest food and beverage company, which aimed to co-create an alternative name for its Vegmite bread spread, shows the risks involved in partial engagement. Kraft’s Vegemite bread spread is a rage among Australian customers. The company ran a competition for two months online, sourced customers’ suggestions, but the customers and other stakeholders were not involved in the selection of the name.

Obviously, Kraft unilaterally selected ‘iSnack2.0’, as its choice.

However, the loyal customers felt it inappropriate. When the name was announced in 2009, the customers, who were left out in the name selection process, tweeted, blogged and ‘youtubed’ with a rage, against Kraft’s choice, forcing Kraft to drop ‘iSnack2.0’ within few days of its official launch!

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Expert Take On the necesity for building co-creation expertise Peter Ryder: Quality: reduced risk of moving an idea to production based on collaboration during idea creation; insight: based on thousands of comments about a brand during the ideation phase focused on a challenge; visibility: massive traditional and social media exposure during the ideation phase. These are huge ROI opportunities.

Jim Brown: The business imperative for these companies is developing and launching profitable products. Social computing is a new tool that manufacturers are using to improve their ability to innovate, design, and develop products. The big reason for companies to embrace social computing is that product development is inherently a team activity. It takes people from multiple disciplines (marketing, engineering, accounting, manufacturing, etc.) to work together. Social computing helps these internal resources work together, and also extends the ability for better communication and collaboration with others outside the organisational boundaries.

The benefits can be in any part of the product life cycle and can improve a number of aspects of product development. If used in the front end of innovation to gather and prioritize product ideas, then it will help the company source better product ideas that will drive higher market share and revenue.

But social computing techniques can also be used later in the product life cycle. For example, communities The Co-creation Roadmap 90

can provide feedback that could help companies identify common product problems in the field. Then, a community of experts could share ideas on how to address the issue. This can improve customer satisfaction and reduce warranty costs. Then, engineers could mine the social interaction to find the more important issues and close the loop to design better products.

I see possibilities to improve the entire product life cycle through social computing. I believe most efforts will start with collaboration internally via innovation portals, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Social computing is changing the way we interact personally and will fundamentally enhance teamwork and information sharing in the business of product development.

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Platform

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Chapter 7

Platform Social media is not a media. The key is to listen, engage, and build relationships.

David Alston, Vice President (Marketing), Radian6

“What we are really talking about (co-creation) is empowering people”, said C K Prahalad. Business should allow people to have their say on, and take part in, value creation. Since the empowerment happens through platforms, platforms are central to co-creation. After all, according to the dictionary definitions, a platform is also “an opportunity for people to voice their views and initiate actions”.

The agenda for companies in the social media age should be to transform themselves as democratized businesses. The idea of a democratized business may sound utopian. But technology is making many things democratic possible. Thanks to the acceptance of co-creation as an effective managerial discipline and the explosion of social media, the business case of democratization is gaining acceptance.

As the influence of “you”, the external stakeholder, continues The Co-creation Roadmap 94

to increase in business, democratized business becomes “an actionable agenda” and in the cases of many innovation-oriented businesses, a basic ingredient for success.

The co-creation platforms enable the process of democratization of business as they allow stakeholders to vote, rate, comment on product ideas and management decisions. Not only democracy is becoming a business term, even, vote, the means of democracy has already become a business tool.

Vote is a standard feature of many co-creation projects. Using ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ icons, many sites dedicated to engage co-creators, let the stakeholders vote for their choice of products or policies.

Dell’s IdeaStorm is a great example of companies directly seeking votes from their customers to decide what to produce.

At Ideastorm, the users can contribute new product ideas and also review and vote the product ideas submitted by others.

And Dell takes the most voted product idea to production.

There are many innovative applications of vote leadership in business. Companies enable stakeholders to vote for their choice of managerial decisions too as they know that democracy not only better products, but also policies. People can be your co-managers, when they engage with you to evolve a design guideline, and they can be your co-regulators, when they engage with you to prepare corporate code of conduct.

For instance, Target Corporation, a US chain of retailing stores, engages the community in the management of its corporate social responsibility. Since 1946, Target has been donating five percent of its income through community grants and programs - today, that giving equals more than $3 million a week.

Through its, “Bullseye Gives” campaign, Target encourages its stakeholders to vote for one of 10 charities the company had selected. The stakeholders can vote via the company’s Facebook page. The company commits its $3 million donation only to the most voted charity.

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Tale of two Platforms Platforms such as Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter play an important role in helping companies create a social presence, enable social participation and of course, source solutions. However, platforms do not mean social media alone.

To illustrate how companies can make co-creation successful using social media and real world events, let us consider the tale of two co-creation projects, undertaken by two different companies: IBM and NEC, to co-create corporate values.

In 2003, IBM used Jam Platform, its own proprietary cocreation platform, to re-examine the company’s core values that was set during the inception of the company, nearly 100 years ago. They named the platform, ‘Values Jam’, a special purpose Jam platform, to bring over thousands of IBMers, who are spread across 30 countries, together to redefine the corporate values. The Values Jam co-creation event was held as a 60-hour virtual meeting, involving multiple sessions. At the end of the event, IBMers created corporate values for IBMers, which “now shape everything” IBMers do and “every choice” IBMers “make on behalf of the company and our clients”. This participatory exercise to create none other than the corporate value greatly inspired employees. IBM says that over 220,000 employees downloaded the “values manifesto” created as a result of the ValuesJam. In 2008, NEC, Japan, embarked on a similar mission: to cocreate the corporate value with employees. However, NEC made the interaction through face to face meetings. NEC clarified the significance of the vision and core values for each division through “dialogue sessions” and “town meetings” at every workplace. All NEC Group companies recognized the importance of the exercise as the President of NEC and top executives were present in these meetings.

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Throughout fiscal 2010, the company organized 24 dialogue sessions at over 13 places worldwide, mobilizing the participation of about 2,700 people. Finally, NEC co-created the Group Vision 2017 and Core Values, with employees. And in addition, the company sourced over 500 new business ideas from its employees, in one month, that reflect the new corporate values and vision. The beauty of the whole exercise is that even the selection of business ideas for implementation was done by employees. The best ideas chosen by employees were developed into new businesses for the future.

These two successful co-creation exercises that used two different platforms could explain enough why companies should be free of bias towards either Facebook or face-to-face interactions. Each platform has its own strengths and obvious limitations and, the strengths and limitations of platforms impact the co-creation process for good or bad.

Depending on the need, the platforms can include a combination of platforms. For instance, Tata’s Tetley puts a mix of diverse media platforms to let its consumers directly interact with the farmers of the tea they consume. The project: Farmers First Hand, “which is all about connecting you, with the people that pick your tea”. The project uses mobile phone and Facebook, and engages an executive to assist farmers in the social participation process. The farmers, who have access only to mobile phones at farms, send their updates to one of the company’s executives, via short text messages. The executive posts the updates onto the Facebook wall. When the customers respond at Facebook, the executive SMSes the content to the farmers!

Companies have to look at creating multiple platforms to engage multiple stakeholders and to facilitate multiple actions that would make the co-creation process more inclusive, effective and participatory.

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Step 5: Create a Platform Bazaar Platforms of the great virtual social media bazaar are more than the top sites like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube. Even a corporate newsletter or a website can provide the opportunity for the stakeholders to express their views and initiate actions. Publishing platforms like wikis, blogs, and secure networks like custom portals, electronic white boards can be co-creation platforms too.

There are many proprietary software applications such as IBM’s Jam that companies are using for specific co-creation projects. There are also on-demand platforms like Innocentive, NineSigma, Yet2, YourEncore, etc that come with all community action tools. They also come with “built-in” communities.

The community members actively participate in problem solving challenges of different companies for monetary rewards and recognitions. There are thematic platforms like Quora that are used only for the purpose of questions and answers. There are industry-specific co-creation platforms too – for instance, Jovoto and Ponoko are co-creation communities that are made primarily of, for, and by design engineers.

Companies have to look at creating multiple platforms to engage multiple stakeholders and to facilitate multiple actions that would make the co-creation process more inclusive, effective and participatory. .

Companies can leverage the content distribution platforms like scribd.com, slideshare.net to share content like press releases, case studies, articles, and build a following.

Enterprise social networking platforms like Yammer are designed to provide a secure co-creation envrionment for the purpose of safeguarding the competitive interests of companies. Launched in September 2008, Yammer is today used by over one lakh companies for engaging employees in co-creation.

Proprietary systems like Brightidea’s WebStorm, one of the The Co-creation Roadmap 98

leading online co-creation platforms, are patroned by companies like GE, Toyota, and Adobe, for internal co-creation. The capabilities of the Brightidea software include: Idea submission by individuals or teams, voting and collaboration, public and private submission fields, and data visualization applications.

These tools provide features like blogs, micro-blogging, status update feeds, and user profiles.

Community Building and Community Sourcing Platforms From the community point of view, the multitude of platforms could be classified in two ways: community-building platforms and community-sourcing platforms. Community building platforms are sites like Facebook, and Google Plus that allow companies to build their own community of fans and followers. They function like an ‘operating platform’ that The Co-creation Roadmap 99

can be the base to support any number of community tools for brands. In contrast, the community-sourcing platforms are meant for brands to source ideas from existing communities of open innovators on-demand - they do not have to build communities right from the scratch. There could be platforms that serve both as community building and sourcing platforms.

Choosing the right platforms: When it comes to selecting the platform, companies should understand the user-base of the platform and the types of user activities popular in those platforms. The portfolio of platforms should ensure that stakeholders of different social, economical, skill, educational backgrounds are empowered.

Hence, companies should know: 1) “What is the choice of platforms of my stakeholders?”

2) “What are the types of exchanges, and co-creation activities that the platform can support?”

The first question concerns with demography of a social media platform, while the second, with the technological ability of the platform. The demography of Facebook is different from the demography of Twitter. People choose social networking sites depending on how open, suitable, accessible and secure the platforms are. It is not unusual for people to suggest LinkedIn for professional networking, and Facebook for social interactions.

Companies should understand, test and experiment with different platforms – whether they are community building or community sourcing platforms – from the demographic point of view. The analysis can even aim to find the link between the participation rate and time of postings.

The demographic data of platforms such as: gender, age, income level, education level, interests, and employment The Co-creation Roadmap 100

should be obtained. Quantcast, and Groundwell’s Consumer Profile Tool are some of the tools that help companies gather the demographic profile of the stakeholders in popular social media platforms like Facebook. Plus, the behaviour of the web participants can be assessed using metrics and intelligence provided by the platforms.

Companies should find where the external stakeholders like customers, and suppliers, are present. Currently, tools like Flowtown and Rapleaf let companies understand the social media hangouts of their target audience, if companies can provide their email addresses.

Platforms enable actions using publishing and participatory tools. The publishing tools enable users to post their views, comment to the views of authors or simply share the views.

While, the participatory tools let you take part in a co-creation process. Examples include tools that allow users to vote, rate, configure, and co-create products.

Co-creation is possible only when we take the technology out of the way - in the sense that we should make technology invisible, affordable, reliable and usable. Ultimately, the success The Co-creation Roadmap 101

of co-creation depends on the opportunities the companies create for people to engage and exchange ideas using technology platforms.

If at all, co-creation demands a new managerial skill or approach, without doubt, it would be something that is rooted in social and anthropological disciplines. Because the anthropological understanding of the participants in social media can go a long way in helping companies understand the “ways� of the participants and how it can be best used for enhancing the participation effectively.

Initial steps in building the platform bazaar Choosing the right mix of platform depends on the profile of stakeholders and the type of co-creation activities. If all a co-creation project needs is the textual input from the stakeholders, then the company can select a platform – probably a simple website with interactive and Wiki features.

The platform choice is very important for creating a wide social presence and soliciting ideas in the right media formats.

To begin with, you will need the following online media platforms to share your ideas: 1) a website, 2) a blog and 3) your own space at social media/networking sites such as Facebook.

You can go for product configurators, rating systems, voting features later, when they are necessary.

Initially, it would be better for you to start with platforms that have simple publishing and participatory tools such as: micro blogging, comments software, tagging, sharing, creating profiles, mailing lists, forums, features to upload and share files, links, and images, polls, surveys, etc. You can always include more community featurs like direct messaging, search of directories and databases, administrative tools, voting, and enable users to install and run applications, configuring products, and virtual assembling, and so on, at later stages.

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When you really want to custom build a platform to suit your own, unique needs, you can hire developers who specialise in this area. Vendors of creation platforms can either build or customize solutions for you.

Expert Take On creating platforms for social product development Jim Brown: There is definitely scope to open up design tools like CAD to social interaction. I think there can be bigger value if we add social computing capabilities into Product Lifecycle Management, the management layer of engineering software.

There are manufacturers who use generalized technologies for social product development, and enable the participation of society particularly in “front end of innovation� processes. But the real value, in my opinion, will come from more integrated solutions that connect the social interaction to the product information.

This also opens up the opportunity to store the social interaction as new corporate knowledge and link it back to the product for future reference and reuse.

On third party product development communities: Jim Brown: This is another great way that people are leveraging social computing. Most companies will stay within their business model and simply improve existing processes. For example, they may replace focus groups with community-based processes using Facebook or The Co-creation Roadmap 103

other applications. Others will invent (or reinvent) business models that are much more innovative. These kinds of businesses are born out of social product development and will be fascinating to watch.

On the success of product configurators Dave Sloan: The configurator is a great bundling tool.

Indeed “guided selling” increases the size of the cart.

We had a group of online shoppers use a Treehouse Logic configurator and tell us what features were most important to them. The answer was a) Performance - fast and fun b) Visualization - accurate visual of the custom product c) Guided and social, ie community based feedback from the vendor, experts and other customers From an implementation perspective, companies should look for speed of development, ROI, ease of maintenance, and ease of integration to common shopping cart solutions. There is no reason to custom code a product configurator anymore.

On the future of configurators and idea contests: Dave: Online product customization used to be very nichey. Only highly specialized products were customizable, and the configurator itself only served technical sales people or a very small power-user customer base. New tools like ours our opening up the market to the mainstream. We’re seeing a few key trends in visual configuration: The Co-creation Roadmap 104

a) All shopping sites will include customization “Customization” is becoming more transparent, it’s just part of a great search and purchase experience. Users expect some level of functional and style customization before they check out. The most common example is a t-shirt. After select a t-shirt design, shoppers select size and color. This is the most basic form of customization, and customers expect a level of control that they didn’t used to have. The shopping interface is becoming more visual and more interactive. Originally, online shopping was all about a database search of static products. The next generation online storefront will include a product visualizer that is driven by attribute selections rather than a soulless search box.

Beyond ratings and recommendations, shoppers will see peer-generated designs that inspire. Customization will be an integral part of an end-to-end marketing strategy. b) Design contests Online shopping is much more than just searching and purchasing. Users will engage with their favorite brands by designing products, posting them to a custom wall, and voting on their favorite peer-generated creations.

Product configurators drive creativity which in turn drives brand engagement and word of mouth marketing.

Visual customizers need to be fun, fast, and social.

The next generation of ecommerce will highlight entertainment and gaming. c) Designer-facing tools The Co-creation Roadmap 105

In the past, product configurator adoption stalled because end-users became overwhelmed with choice.

A blank slate can be intimidating. We’re seeing a next generation of designer-facing visual configurators that help designers reach new shoppers. Examples are the reverse auction business model of Bespokeable, as well as designer portals like Fabricly and Garmz. These sites allow entrepreneurs to create their designs and have access to market. These design portals enable crowdsourced design, ala Zazzle, CafePress, and Threadless, that create network effects like eBay and Etsy.

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Promotion

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Chapter 8

Promotion Most organizations spend their time marketing to the crowd.

Smart organizations assemble the tribe.

Seth Godin, Author

In search of common men Co-creation is a pursuit of engaging with a diversified stakeholder groups and building deeper, meaningful relationships with them. The popular perception of co-creation is that it is about business to customer engagement. It makes sense for companies to focus on lead users and customers, when it comes to generating ideas for improving products or service offerings. However, the real benefits of co-creation lie in making the co-creation process open for the participation of all stakeholder groups or ‘crowds’, the unidentified participants or people without profiles.

The ‘crowds’ or ‘creative mobs’ are not customers or employees. They may or may not hold a title in your organization.

They may or may not belong to your region of operation. But The Co-creation Roadmap 108

still they are willing co-creators, who are open to engage with you to co-create common good value.

The annual “learning journeys”, organised by Mr Tex Gunning, a globally renowned manager, when he was with Unilever as the President of Unilever BestFoods, aimed at connecting senior managers with the common man. Tex would take hundreds of his top managers every year on learning journeys to countries such as China, India, Sri Lanka to get inspiration to find solutions to business problems. But Tex and his team did not meet corporate gurus or customers there. They were immersed in community service, interacted with monks, students, visited local markets, and homes, stayed at orphanages, monastries, ashrams, observed the functioning of microenterprises, and charities. This helped them reflect on the role of leaders, businesses, products, and life.

Tex writes, “Over the last 15 years significant shareholder’s value have been destroyed by “insightful and creative” marketers resulting in the shocking statistic that more than 90% of launches and re-launches do fail.” The product failures in their own way reveal the failure of business leaders to connect with market, social realities.

Tex saw that the “average companies take care of themselves and their families – their direct stakeholders, such as employees, directors, shareholders, and suppliers.” But good companies take care of, and engage with, not only their direct stakeholders, “but also others in the community.”

Mapping the stakeholders with business priorities does not mean co-creation can and should happen only with those mapped groups. The co-creation initiator – the company – should respect the fact that co-creation spans boundaries of all sorts – intellectual, demographical, geographical The Financial Times’ Lexicon emphasizes the ‘boundary less’ nature of co-creation, in its definition of co-creation as “the process by which groups of people from across boundaries The Co-creation Roadmap 109

come together with a shared purpose to create value through improving or developing services and products”.

The essential aspect of tapping the wisdom of crowds obviously is in making co-creation “boundary-less” - instead of restricting the participation only to people, who belong to certain hierarchy or technical background.

In their own ways, businesses have been engaging with people of different strata of society, in the right belief that truly inspiring insights can come only from common man, who is outside the corporate circle. The common man can see things differently than a consumer or an investor because he does not have any stake in the business, and hence have no vested interest in the success or failure of a particular product or technology.

Their unbiased temper often times bring fresh insights into the table. Several research works of Dr Read Montague, a leading expert on neuroscience, demonstrate how the bias – “emotional connection”, “irrationality” – of stakeholders like customers result in self-fulfilling prophecies. One of Dr Montague’s study asked the participants to tell the artworks they like the most. The participants were told that their participation in the study was sponsored by a particular art gallery. And the participants, by now identified themselves as the beneficiaries of the art gallery, rated the art works of their sponsoring gallery the best.

Thats why companies like Sense Worldwide build a cocreation community of diverse people. Its community has about 2000 members but it took the company over ten years to build. The Sense Network comprises not just creative people or consumers but also “a pagan witch, a newspaper editor, an airline pilot, a TV mogul, and a prescription drug addict”, and thus represent a wide cross section of society and people from all social, intellectual, and business backgrounds.

As is the case with many co-creation projects, the sheer diversity of participants produces cross pollination of ideas The Co-creation Roadmap 110

and “strange bedfellows” - a partnership between research & development team and a state regulator; a regulator and a consumer, and sometimes, a competitor and a competitor.

A 1000 True Co-creators Mr Kevin Kelly, co-founder, Wired Magazine, conceived a “1000 True Fans” formula, which says that an artist (singer, dancer, writer, etc) would need about 1000 true fans to make a descent living. He tells who the true fans are. They are those, “who are willing to spend at least their one day earnings on their favorite artist’s products once a year”.

Here, the emphasis is on commitment, dedication and deeper levels of engagement of a certain number of people, the critical mass. In the context of the world of social co-creation, a company can aim at creating certain number of true fans and followers with high levels of participation. One of the primary tasks of co-creation boards is the identification of potential participants of different levels of contribution and commitment.

Not all fans are equal. The level of participation – the contribution in terms of time, and skill, for instance – varies from one participant group to another at any point of time.

If companies do not know who they want to have as participants, they cannot create any strategy to attract and incentivize them. McKinsey emphasizes that companies should not neglect “the up-front research needed to identify potential participants who have the right skill-sets and will be motivated to participate over the longer term”.

Hence evolving methods for the identification of various levels of participation is the starting point in creating various opportunities for all levels of participation of community members. There could be fans who have the maximum level of time, skill and other resources, and importantly, the enthusiasm The Co-creation Roadmap 111

to share them across. And there could be some fans who may have them all but for one reason or the other, are not going to share them for a co-creation project.

Hence, companies should break a co-creation project into several stages or ‘micro’ co-creation tasks so that people from all skill and commitment levels can contribute to. This way, a co-creation project becomes ‘easy-to-engage-with’.

In the context of an idea contest, for instance, fans can fall under one of the following four levels: Level 1: Followers People who follow what you do through social networking sites as fans, subscribers to your blogs, etc. They know what you do.

Level 2: Evangelists People, who are more than followers. They take their time off to talk about the project and spread the word around. They promote your cause or interest.

Level 3: Disciples People, who contribute and add value in terms of taking part in surveys, commented on ideas, etc. They add value to what you do.

Level 4: Co-creators People, who are willing to dedicate a certain time, money or effort and fulfil the co-creation goals. They do your job on your behalf.

The level of participation of a follower is minimal when compared to the level of participation of an evangelist, who spreads the idea, or the disciple, who submits an idea.

Let us take the example of The Betacup Challenge (the one sponsored by Starbucks, to find environment friendly ways to dispense coffee): the level 1 participants were people who folThe Co-creation Roadmap 112

lowed the Challenge, by going through the ideas submitted by others. The level 2 participants were those who spread the word around by blogging about it, social updating with backlinks.

The level 3 participants were those who contributed comments, ratings, and feedbacks. Betacup received 13,000 comments. And the level 4 participants - the co-creators - were those who took part completely: they submitted ideas. The Betacup Challenge had received about 430 fans submitting their ideas - which marked the highest level of participation.

However, we have to remember that the level 1-4 categorization is not a rigid one, and fans are not going to remain in any one category permanently. Because their involvement can change from time to time.

Step 6: Incorporate motivating factors Social media-led co-creation happens around values, and not money. It does not happen with stick and carrot, even if it is Intranet-based, and employee-oriented. Whether it is blogsphere or Facebooksphere, people need a reason or motivation to engage with a brand.

It is worth quoting some of the outcomes of BlogSweden, which is supposed to be “the longest running annual blog survey in the world”, conducted by Mr Hans Kullin, a Sweedish PR practitioner. In 2010 survey, his survey gathered inputs from a total of 2,251 blog readers. Of the respondents, 94% had at least one blog. His survey results on “Why people choose to follow brands on Twitter and become a fan, or like, brands on Facebook?” reveal that the number one reason is “To show other people that I like the brand”. In other words, people become fans of brands when they are very proud of them.

The chief motivators of social media include: The Co-creation Roadmap 113

Visibility: People tweet, blog to be seen in the conversation space, to be identified with a brand, group, theme, etc.

Incentives: Cash prize, certificates, mementos, credits, cash awards are some forms of incentives. The incentive could be about providing exclusive information, sneak preview about survey results, forthcoming products, etc.

Socialising opportunities: In other words, networking.

Participants take part in co-creation also to connect with the like minded peoples, experts, friends.

Altruism: People also participate for the sake of a cause and not for cash prize or fame.

VISA Power in Action To see how social media stars are making use of the VISA power, let us consider few social co-creation initiatives.

Visibility: When people told BlogSweden that they want to “show other people” they were talking about the visibility factor - who they want to be seen with. Many companies recognize visibility needs of fans and followers.

For instance, NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing), a business venture that sanctions and governs multiple auto racing sports in the US, set up “Fan Council”, a pre-qualified online community of about 12,000 fans, who take part in its competition, business and marketing decisions.

NASCAR engages its fans to generate inputs specific to all industry stakeholders.

Fans consider being part of the NASCAR’s Fans Council itself an honor. To be an Intel Insider, the fans recognized for their contributions or influence by Intel, itself is a matter of pride for Intel’s fans.

Ford, for its Fiesta promotion, identified about “100 agents”, The Co-creation Roadmap 114

the digital influencers it chose from 4000 applicants to test drive their new Fiesta for 6 months. The level of commitment of these agents – disciples – is so high that they regularly post videos on their Ford experience.

Symantec, the security software company, terms its highly satisfied fans, “Advocates of Norton”.

Incentive (cash prize): Mojo Yogurt, a yogurt ice cream seller in the US, has a simple and successful social media strategy. It tweets a secret word every Tuesday, and if a customer says the word to the cashier in the store, he or she gets 50% discount. PhotoBox creates “Insider Community”. The customers who made more than four orders in the previous 12 months can become a member of the Insider Community.

The insiders get 15% discount on future orders. The insiders provide profitable new product ideas.

Before launching Innovation Jam, a co-creation project, in 2006, IBM committed US$100 million to fund the best ideas.

In the first phase, the Innovation Jam attracted about 1,50,000 participants from over 100 countries. The 72-hour jam generated over 40,000 posts. At the end 30 winning ideas were selected, out of which 10 ideas were taken by IBM to create new businesses for the company.

With over 70,000 participants from over 150 countries, the GE Ecomagination Challenge is the world’s largest open innovation contest to date and marks a quantum leap in collaborative innovation. In just 90 days, the initiative collected almost 4,000 ideas and connected GE with the brightest entrepreneurs worldwide to find and fund the best new smart grid technologies with $200 million of investment capital.

At the launch event in 2010, GE announced the Ecomagination Challenge, a global open contest that called for updates to the existing power grid through 21st century technologies.

Together with top venture capital firms GE committed $200 The Co-creation Roadmap 115

million to help entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world develop their ideas and bring them to market. $100,000 awards were offered for each of five winning ideas along with the potential to partner with GE or its VC partners. In addition, the contest’s most voted on submission received a $50,000 award. GE also went beyond the $200 million already pledged by granting $100,000 each for five promising products ideas in the early-concept development phase. And as 15% of submissions in the challenge came from students, GE promised to invest $10 million a year in academic partnerships to promote technological advancement through education.

The result: 3,800+ ideas, 81,000+ comments, 120,000+ votes 70,000 participants from around the globe 12 projects funded with $55 million Collaborate with small businesses around the world

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Socializing: The other popular reason is “To be a part of a group of people with similar interests” - the socialising part.

Companies realise that it’s just as important to connect the participants with each other as it is to connect them with their own employees.

The BMW Co-creation Lab cites that it could attract more participants for its contest because the participants are very thrilled to connect with BMW’s expert engineers.

Altruism: And finally, altruism - the selfless concern for the welfare of others. Flooding of environmental restoration ideas at the wake of BP oil crisis is one example. Altruism is the biggest motivator of social media successes of all times.

Wikipedia is co-created primarily out of altruistic factors.

Wikipedia “is written collaboratively by largely anonymous Internet volunteers who write without pay”. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, attracing over 70 million visitors monthly.

As on January, 2010, there are more than 91,000 active contributors working on more than 15,000,000 articles in more than 270 languages. There are over 3,257,920 articles in English.

Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to augment the knowledge held by Wikipedia encyclopedia. There are 91,000 active contributors.

What is the driving force? Without doubt, the credit goes to altruistic attitude of the contributors, who were excited by the vision, “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”

Hyundai’s Assurance Program was another success story in this space. The company integrated its customer relationship management strategy with corporate social strategy. The Assurance program was launched in 2009, when the economic conditions were bad and the unemployment was on the rise in countries like Japan. The job security became a question and The Co-creation Roadmap 117

employees were reluctant to buy cars. Assurance promised the customers that if they lost their jobs, they could return the car and did not have to worry about paying the due.

Hyundai began promoting the idea on Facebook and Twitter.

Customers blogged and tweeted about it and people responded with enthusiasm. Hyundai sales went up 6.2 percent through November 2009.

Almost all of the VISA aspects are effectively used by SAP. The company identifies and provides special status to exceptional and high-value users. SAP Mentors are the top community influencers of the SAP Ecosystem. It currently has about 100 plus mentors who mostly work for customers or partners of SAP. All of them are hands-on experts of an SAP product or service, as well as excellent champions of community projects.

SAP Mentors are offered unique opportunities for access to SAP senior management, early access to information on products and programs and greater visibility in the online communities as well as at SAP events such as SAP Tech Ed. The benefits for SAP Mentors include: Recognition as an SAP credited expert Icon ! next to their name in the forums and Business Card Invitation to SAP events VIP Access to SAP Information Private SAP Mentor Forum Private SAP Network Wiki Space SAP Mentor only webinars with SAP subject matter experts VIP Seating (TechEd, Sapphire, etc.)

Trust, the vital link The Co-creation Roadmap 118

In social co-creation, companies should aim to create more number of co-creators: more focused and committed fans.

They should recognize and reward them. How to do that?

The single most important criterion is: trust. Companies need to earn the trust of the people by showing how committed they are to the cause, in the interest of which they seek public participation. The trust flowers with corporate performance and transparency in communication.

When Starbucks introduced the Betacup Challenge to cocreate an environmental friendly dispensing solution, it could motivate people to take part in the project, largely because the company made known it’s commitment to environmental protection. In its website and through other media channels, it published its track record: in 1997, it developed a recycledcontent cup sleeve as a way to protect customers from hot beverages and avoid the waste of “double cupping.” In 2006, it launched the industry’s first hot beverage paper cup with 10% post-consumer recycled fiber. In 2008, it rolled out a new plastic cup that has less of an environmental impact than its original plastic cups. And in 2009, it hosted a Cup Summit in Seattle, bringing together all facets of its paper and plastic cup value chain to find agreement on criteria for a comprehensive recyclable cup solution.

Web participants - co-creators - will be more willing to participate in the contests or challenges posted by companies who have already been doing their part in solving them. In other words, solvers would take co-creation initiatives seriously when the corporate shows commitment.

Nestle publishes its performances: the actions it is taking on its part to address the problems in the areas of nutrition, women empowerment, and water conservation, its “shared value” areas. These are Nestle’s co-creation hot spots - in Nestle’s own words, these are areas where the “value can best be created both for society and shareholders”.

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Nestle publishes its key performance indicators (KPIS) in these hot spot areas, and it seeks suggestions from the stakeholders how to better modify or create new KPIs. Patagonia, a clothing company in the US, has a big community of customers and environmental activists. The company, through Footprint Chronicles, a forum dedicated to improving the sustainability of its products, allows user to track the impact of any Patagonia product on environment, from design through delivery.

Patagonia publishes the distance a product travelled, energy consumption, carbon dioxide emission, waste generated, and water consumption of its products, and the steps it is taking to make each of their product more environment friendly.

Patagonia invites the community to take part in the conversation in improving its performance and finding environmental friendly raw materials, for better responsible manufacturing, consumption, etc.

Initial steps in incorporating motivating factors Motivating factors are something that are more to do with the corporate identity and trust than with the factors like prize money. However, you should not understimate the power of cash incentives or the other items in the V.I.S.A group. Try to include all the four elements of motivations.

Co-creators are people and in social media we are building people relations. Simple things like responding to their queries genuinely and speedily would go a long way in establishing the relations in an organic way.

Social media is not a number game. Says Mr Mack Collier, a social media strategist: “One of the examples was how I have almost 22,000 followers on Twitter, and yet I rarely get 1-2% of them to click on any link I share on Twitter�. According to him, the level of engagement is going to be low, and will The Co-creation Roadmap 120

likely be inversely proportional to the size of the group. That means, “If you only have your 10 closest friends following you, obviously you will have a high level of engagement with that core group. But as you grow to 1,000 followers, obviously you can’t be closely connected to all of those people, and their level of interaction and engagement with you will fall.” Therefore, instead of just looking at increasing the number of fans, companies should try to see the level of commitment it has generated for its co-creation programmes.

Never ever resort to inorganic methods of growing the number of Facebook fans. No business value is going to be generated when your fan base increases by 100% as a result of a social media campaign or search engine optimization techniques. Have the perseverance of a farmer!

Expert Take On investing in social media tools and fans Andy Smith: I think there can be few things more worth investing in than in tools – digital or otherwise that create meaningful interactions between a company and its customers.The evolution of the social web has provided an opportunity for brands to engage with their customers in a way that involves very little effort on the part of the customer.

All other things being equal this should translate into the opportunity to develop a wealth of extremely broad customer insights that in turn lead to better products and services. So the trade-off between investing in product and in interacting with customers is only encountered by

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companies who see the opportunity to engage merely as a means to promote their offerings.

The social web is not just a new place for companies to put ads. Those that view it that way are not only wasting their money, they are possibly missing an unprecedented chance to learn a huge amount about their customer and how to fulfill their current and future needs. One last point, here, when it comes to the number of customers to listen to, beyond a certain point size doesn’t matter. It’s a great deal more important to direct effort toward really listening to the relatively few highly engaged customers who say they can’t live without your product than to the many more weak-tie participants that encounter your company solely for a contest entry and a chance to win a trip to Disneyland.

On sharing business benefits that come out of cocreation: Andy Smith: From what I have observed, for the most part crowdsourcing is not a replacement for employees.

Participants tend to participate for the opportunity to contribute to something they care about, and for the potential recognition of supplying something that is useful and stands out.

Companies tend to share the benefit through the recognition process that may also include a prize of some sort, as well as through the development of better products, faster. Stakeholders who participate actively enough to matter to companies are often those that benefit from satisfaction and from improving a product that they use.

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On what motivates participation: Peter Ryder: Money, love and glory. Prize money and the opportunity to sell ideas is one. Love entails building a network with creatives globally or working on problems that are important (e.g. sustainability, greenpeace, unicef, etc.). Glory is the opportunity to work on interesting brands, get exposure and build a portfolio. Jovoto also tracks great creative work on our platform and awards “karma” points.

Creatives who demonsrate great creative capability enter into our best creative category and can work in our “labs” model (see presentation) which is non-spec work. Open, transparent, fair environment is critical for this and our philosophy and platform provide for it.

One of the advantages of running an online or realtime community is that you can co-create with superusers while keeping the IP under control. The important thing is to reward your key participants. Money and free product is good - praise and creative credit is great. Share the glory, keep the IP. On community building: Peter Ryder: Open, transparent and fair treatment of creatives.Building a community that collaborates and evaluates in an open manner (not just submitting ideas but collaborating and curating competitions). Providing experienced, professional community managers that engage the creative community during all competitions and on an ongoing basis.

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Afterword Ram S Ramanathan, Learner, Teacher, Manager, Author and Coach

I am hugely impressed with Sankar’s roadmap to co-creation.

It is very well written on an excellent structure of wisdom, research, and scholarly opinion. It is of value not merely for students or practitioners of management, but also to every one of us. We can all enhance our lives by putting these principles into practice in our business and social life.

The very definition of cocreation implies two distinct entities or concepts that come together to form a whole or to spawn a third. Whether it is a physical creation or a non-physical intellectual or emotional creation, different elements need to come in to create something that sustains and energizes. In music, traditional Indian music, there is a constant interplay of raga and tala, melody and beat. One is emotional, perhaps feminine and the other physical time based, perhaps masculine.

In writing, it is the interplay of the emotional content and The Co-creation Roadmap 125

the structure. Even in management, a male bastion, success depends on the balance between soft and hard qualities. In everything that we do there is a cocreation of at least two elements of diverse nature. We take this for granted.

Evolution of species rests on co-creation. Hindu mythology is replete with this duality, especially in exploring the realms of our desires. Interestingly, it also has a concept that brings the two energies together into a cocreative singularity.

Ardhanarishwara is a unique Hindu concept of the duality of male and female energies merging into a singularity, as the most visible form of cocreation. Half man half woman, half Shiva half Devi, Iswara appears singular, split in duality. I see it as Tao, the cocreation of the masculine and feminine energies into a singular entity.

Krishna says in the Gita that that which is perishable is not real. That which is real does not die. One who has seen the boundary between these two has known all. When Arjuna questions Krishna how such a man behaves, Krishna simply says: Such a person sees himself in all beings and all beings in himself. This state of Self-Realization is the ultimate in cocreation. Everything that one thinks about, talks about and does in this state is not about oneself or for oneself. It is for the entire world, all humanity and all living beings.

Lifestyle of Co-creation Cocreation is a process that I have practised intuitively for decades. I did not learn it consciously to start with. I trusted people and believed in their capability. As I rose in the management ladder, I built teams as this seemed to be the ideal way to bring together and synergize human potential. I was successful because the team members made me successful.

Over time, I came across branded management processes that built upon the strengths of cocreation. They aligned with The Co-creation Roadmap 126

my philosophy and ideals. They helped me enhance my effectiveness. In my forty years of corporate experience there have been a few processes that have become trendsetters. Perhaps coincidentally, each has been a cocreative process. I share some of these with you.

Toyota System of Management The first that I encountered a few decades ago was the Toyota System of Management, popularly known as the Toyota Production System or TPS. The acronym TPS does little justice to the power of this process, as it encompasses all aspects of management as well as business, not just production. So powerful was its impact that a seminal book by Womack & Jones with the startling title ‘The Machine that changed the world’ led a new conceptual revolution called Lean Thinking. Lean Thinking in turn led to Six Sigma and such other quality revolutions.

The power of Toyota’s system lay in its focus on people and people power. It was the first time that a profit motivated entity unabashedly acknowledged the need for collaborative management and co-creative decision making. This philosophy underlying the Toyota 4 P system led to a company practically unknown in the seventies to rule the global automotive market since the eighties.

In their classic book Womack & Jones say: In General Motors, only the Plant Manager can stop the assembly line. In Toyota, any line operator can bring the assembly line to a halt if he finds a defect.

In GM, the assembly line rarely runs continuously. In Toyota the assembly line rarely stops.

There can be no greater tribute to the collaborative power of co-creation than the authority given to the lowest worker on the shop floor to stop a line causing the loss of a million dollars. The Toyota belief is that the man on the shop floor The Co-creation Roadmap 127

knows best than someone in the boardroom.

The Toyota System displaced the techniques established by Frederick Taylor and his tribe of industrial engineers in early 1900s, who went around clocking furiously every movement a worker made, convinced that unless the worker was tightly controlled nothing can work.

Ford and GM who built their machine centric empires based on these principles, many anti-human, conceded to the power of human creation that Toyota espoused.

Americans can claim part of the credit through excellent work done by Deming and Juran in these fields, especially in quality in Japan, though Toyota began its experiments much before these quality gurus arrived in Japan.

I have been exposed to the Toyota system for many years now and it has guided my thinking in ways far beyond management.

While it is lauded for its quality and waste reduction, the system at its core is about human potential. It is about unlocking that potential by allowing participation and co-creation. I have been a Toyota customer for more than twenty years now and a very satisfied one! As I love to say, with my first Toyota that I used for over 10 years, the only repair the car needed other than routine servicing was a fan belt change, once! My other cars, (no names, please), went to a mechanic at least once a month for some defect or another.

From Toyota to Coaching The Toyota belief in the potential of people and its philosophy of focusing on unlocking that potential is reflected in another process that I embraced a decade or so later.

Coaching, in the way an outsider perceives it, has nothing to do with Toyota. As a coach interested in learning and scholarship, I found many parallels.

A Coach needs to be aware, both of himself and the client. A The Co-creation Roadmap 128

coach needs to be observant and listen. He has to be respectful of his client and gain respect and trust in return. A coach’s only focus is his customer, the client. A coach relies on human potential. His job is to unlock the potential.

A Coach is a co-creator, along with his client, of the fulfillment of the dreams, visions, goals and plans of the client. He walks with his client on a journey to success.

A coach is not a mentor. A mentor shares his experience with a younger or inexperienced person. Unfortunately, my experiences can never be yours. You need to experience truths yourself. Only then will they work. A good coach would never try to share his experiences with you. At best, he may help you learn through them indirectly, if they suit your needs.

A coach is not a consultant. He does not solve your problems.

You and only you can solve your problems. At best you can use the coach as a sounding board and an intelligent mirror.

A coach does not borrow your watch to tell you the time. He lets you look at it and find the time.

A coach is not a counselor or therapist. The past has little to do with coaching. Coaching is about the present moment. It is about NOW. The future is relevant as a direction. But, the future can become reality only if it is acted upon NOW. The past is history. Try as we may, we never learn from the past.

So, the coach helps the client focus on current challenges and overcome mental blocks the client has in the present moment, wherever their origin may be in time and space.

A coach is a co-creator, who helps the client unlock his or her inner potential. We all have vast potential. This potential is hidden and hindered by conditioned negative beliefs we grow with. The coach’s function is to help the client become aware of these bocks. Often, the mere awareness of these bocks is sufficient to dispel them. Sometimes, one may need to lead the client through deeper insights.

In his excellent series of Inner Game books, Timothy GallThe Co-creation Roadmap 129

wey, talks about interference played by an inner voice, stopping us from reaching our potential. A good coach helps modify that voice into an understanding, and supportive one.

A coach is never a trainer, teacher, mentor, counselor or consultant. He is a cocreator. The beauty of the cocreative coaching process is that any of these skills, such as training, teaching, mentoring, counseling or consulting, can be enhanced through the coaching approach.

Involving the stakeholder deeply into the transformation process is not merely desirable but essential for sustainability.

Open Space Interactive Processes A process that has gained popularity in recent times, and one that I have been engaged in with great learning is Open Space or Large Scale Interactive Process.

OSIP or LSIP as it is referred to helps converge inputs from large groups of people in any kind of situation, not necessarily in a formal conference or classroom situation, into actionable conclusions. It’s an extremely powerful cocreative process, in which even a group of a thousand or more people can share their views and lead the discussion to good conclusions.

OSIP is not a voting, polling or any such yes, no, may be or ranking process. These do not allow discussions. They do not allow sharing of opinions. They are not interactive. They are not cocreative. They are not value enhancing.

OSIP can range from two or three day processes to a few hours processes, from a few dozen people to a few thousand people. Over time, technology may help expand boundaries of numbers and shrink time needed.

An OSIP process I am currently working on involves about 1500 people, who within 2 hours will cocreate solutions for a community in facing challenges over the next few years. Given the time constraint, participants will start with themes they have The Co-creation Roadmap 130

already decided upon. They will analyze the opportunities and challenges and finally converge on to a few SMART action plans, measurable and implementable.

In other groups, where more time is available, participants may start with a clean slate and cocreate themes relevant to them. They can then proceed to analyze these themes and then synthesize cocreatively actionable solutions.

Potential for such processes is limitless. From simple market research to product and process developments in diverse fields, from the merely commercial to national governance, OSIP can help enhance decision making through collective, collaborative, consensual and cocreative approaches.

As I see it, as a learner, teacher, manager, and family person, co-creation in actions by involving everyone around us is a life style that we all need to cultivate.

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Expert Take Contributors

Following are the brief introductions to the experts, who had given the author exclusive interviews on co-creation: Mr Andy Smith, co-author of The Dragonfly Effect: Andy Smith is an experienced tech marketer and a Principal of Vonavona Ventures where he advises and bootstraps technical and social ventures with guidance in marketing, customer strategy and operations. He earned his MBA at UCLA’s Anderson School and holds an Economics degree from Pomona College.

Professor Bill Fischer: Bill Fischer is Professor of Technology Management at IMD Business School, Switzerland. He is the co-author of The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen. His areas of special interest include: Management of technology, including management of the creative processes within research and development.

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Mr Brian Millar: Brian Millar is the Strategy Director at Sense Worldwide, a co-creation agency that helps companies implement co-creation strategies for branding, product/process design, etc. Millar is a advertising, media industry veteran. He has worked for Saatchi and Saatchi, and Ogilvy. He had built two agencies, and a computer games company, before joining Sense Worldwide.

Mr Dave Sloan: Dave Sloan is the CEO of Treehouse Logic, which offers a hosted design tool solution that enables customer co-creation. The Treehouse Logic platform enables a user experience that is high performance, guided to aid the decision process, and connected to social networks.

Prof Frank Piller: Frank Piller is the Chair Professor of Management at the Technology & Innovation Management Group of RWTH Aachen University, Germany, one of Europe’s leading institutes of technology. Before joining Aachen in March 2007, he worked at the MIT Sloan School of Management (BPS, Innovation Group, 2004-2007).

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Mr Jim Brown: Jim Brown is the founder and President of Tech-Clarity, which is an independent research and consulting firm that specializes in analyzing the true business value of software technology and services.

Jim has 20 years of experience in application software, management consulting and research focused on the manufacturing industries.

Mr Peter Ryder: Peter Ryder is the President, Americas, Jovoto, a community of creatives and a platform that enables collaboration and conversation. Peter is based out of the company’s headquarters in New York’s Flatiron District. He was earlier with Deloitte Consulting, where he was director in the company’s high tech group.

Mr Simon Holloway: Simon Holloway is the Practice Leader for Process Management and RFID, Bloor Research, UK. His IT background spans some 20 years as an IT consultant specialising in IS/IT strategy planning, information management, corporate data and process modelling, and business process re-engineering.

T h e f u l l i n t e r v i e w s o f e x p e r t s a r e ava i l a b l e a t http://www.younomy.com/guruspeak.html

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References 2010 McKinsey Survey of global business leaders on the influence of external stakeholders in business Surveys of Kalypso and Digital Brand Expressions on social media in 2010 -2011 Harvard Business Review article, “Co-Opting Customer Competence” June, 2008 issue of Inc Magazine report on Threadless.com Reports on Copenhagen Co-creation Summit organised by Danish Design Association in 2009 Reports on Starbucks sponsored International Betacup Contest, 2010 The CEO letter of Mr Mark Parker, CEO, Nike in the 2010 Annual Report Symantec’s Materiality Analysis Report Millward Brown Optimor (MBO) listing of world’s valuable brands (2011) “Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny”, authored by Prof Amartya Sen, Economist The Co-creation Roadmap 136

2011 Altimeter study on the participation of C-suite executives in corporate social media teams A blog post by Mr Jeremiah Owing of Altimeter Group on five social media organizational types Citation of Open Leadership Award to Dell Dell Hell blog posts by Jeff Jarvis Report of “Problem Conference� of Quebec, 2010 by Prof Frank Piller Where Good Ideas Come From, authored by Mr Steven Johnson Study titled, The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving, published by Innocentive BlogSweden Report on the motivations for social media participation

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