The Power of Co-Creation ─ Build It With Them to Boost Growth, Productivity, and Profits

Apple embraced co-creation to enhance the speed and scope of its innovation, generating over $1 billion for its App-Store partner-developers in two years, even as it overtook Microsoft in market value. Starbucks launched its online platform MyStarbucksldea.com to tap into ideas from customers and turbocharged a turnaround. Unilever turned to co-creation for redesigning product lines such as Sunsilk shampoo and revitalized growth. Nike achieved remarkable success with its Nike+ co-creation initiative, which enables a community of over a million runners to interact with one another and the company, increasing its market share by 10 percent in the first year.

Co-creation involves redefining the way organizations engage individuals—customers, employees, suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders—bringing them into the process of value creation and engaging them in enriched experiences, in order to

formulate new breakthrough strategies

design compelling new products and services

transform management processes

lower risks and costs

increase market share, loyalty, and returns

In this pathbreaking book, Venkat Ramaswamy (who coined the term co-creation with C.K. Prahalad) and Francis Gouillart, pioneers in working with companies to develop co-creation practices, show how every organization—from large corporation to small firm, and government agency to not-for-profit—can achieve "win more–win more" results with these methods. Based on extraordinary research and the authors' hands-on experiences with successful projects in co-creation at dozens of the world's most exciting organizations, The Power of Co-Creation illustrates with detailed examples from leading firms such as those above, as well as from Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Amazon, Jabil, Predica, Wacoal, Caja Navarra, and many others, how enterprises have used a wide range of "engagement platforms"—and how they have even restructured internal management processes—in order to harness the power of co-creation.

As the authors' wealth of examples make vividly clear, enterprises can no longer afford to view customers and other stakeholders as passive recipients of their products and services but must learn to engage them in defining and delivering enhanced value. Co-creation goes beyond the conventional "process view" of quality, re-engineering, and lean thinking, and is the essential new mind-set and practice for boosting sustainable growth, productivity, and profits in the future.

Venkat Ramaswamy is Hallman Fellow of Electronic Business and professor of marketing at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He speaks, teaches, and consults globally about co-creation, mentoring many organizations in their quest to become a co-creative enterprise. He is a coauthor of the award-winning book The Future of Competition. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and blogs at venkatramaswamy.com
Francis Gouillart is president and founder of the Experience Co-Creation Partnership. He is a consultant and teacher who helps many organizations implement co-creation around the world, and coauthor of the acclaimed book Transforming the Organization. He lives in Concord, Massachusetts, and blogs at francisgouillart.com.