Co-Creation driving Innovation

Co-Creation driving Innovation

What does Doritos chips, Starwood hotels and Timex watches have in common? According to Gerhard Gschwandtner, Editor and Founder of Selling Power, they are all engaging their customers to co-create. In the latest issue of Selling Power, Gschwandtner talks about the role of co-creation driving innovation in mainstream businesses.

What is Co-Creation?

Gschwandtner summarizes: "Information (online) technology has empowered consumers to share ideas, documents, images, and movies across the forever- expanding digital world. The Internet allows businesses to engage customers in a creative workshop experience." This online engagement with the customers that creates new innovative solutions is Co-Creation.

Doritos and The Super Bowl

What is Doritos doing to co-create with the customers? How about a "story about eating your first Doritos chips or what life is like for the spices on the surface of the chip"? Consumers are invited to submit their 30-second homemade videos on stories about Doritos. Talk about whetting consumers' appetite for Doritos with the growing appetite of homemade videos - it appears that Doritos has created the perfect match. And the best part is the grand prize: the top video will be aired as a commercial during next year's Super Bowl (2007). Five finalists will also be awarded $10,000 each. Doritos wins by rallying hundreds of thousands of consumers to create playful videos about its chips, creating the consumer buzz around Doritos at time of the Super Bowl, and finally showcasing the advertisement in front of about a hundred million people watching the Super Bowl. Co-Creation in motion.

Aloft at Starwood

The next time you want to go to a great hotel, how about just logging online and typing in: www.virtualaloft.com. No need to leave home. Welcome to Aloft Hotel, the new futuristic hotel from Starwood. The virtual hotel invites guests to tour the hotel and get a 360 degree view, walk around the lobby, check into a room, swim in the pool, and even watch a sunset on the rooftop terrace. Starwood has taken the concept of co-creation to the next level (literally) by creating the first virtual hotel online, and simultaneously encouraging the customers to provide feedback and engage with the designers and architects who are building the real hotel.

The real hotel will not open until 2008 - plenty of time for Starwood to gather all the customer inputs and creating something that customers really crave for. What a great concept? For instance, at their website, the designers heard one question a few times on "why there wasn't a door in the bathroom." They immediately responded that "there will be a sliding door in the real hotel" and explained why it was missing in the first place. Co-Creation at work.

Timex and The Future of Time



Timex, as part of its 150th Anniversary celebration, and to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to design and innovation, conducted a global design competition: Timex2154: The Future of Time (2004+150 years=2154). Designers from more than 72 countries explored and visualized personal and portable timekeeping 150 years into the future and submitted 640 entries. An assembled world-class design team evaluated the entries in three categories: wrist-based, wearable, and conceptual, and chose the winners. Timex could not have done this alone (if they would have tried to design a futuristic watch). Instead, they were able to obtain 640 creative ideas from some of the world's best designers in a timely manner. Further, Timex created a leadership position as a Watch company by creating such a campaign and getting the inputs from some of the best designers. Co-Creation driving innovation.

Diversity drives Innovation

Gschwandtner compares the past and the present of customer innovations: "In the past, customers have been limited to communicating their wants and needs in surveys and focus groups; today, brands deploy existing technologies to map their customer’s imagination. Brands no longer view consumers as targets with a wallet, but as co-creators of exciting and profitable solutions." This is a tremendous shift. Rather than simply aiming customers for profits with obsolete products, now you are learning from them in real-time and creating better products that will in turn create profitable customers. And today's customer who is digitally engaged and enjoys personal service would not have it any other way. Gschwandtner aptly quotes the term "Diversity drives Innovation" from the book The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson to demonstrate the effect of Co-Creation.

Bottomline

As Co-Creation demonstrates tangible results, more mainstream businesses will experiment and adopt it - not just technology companies. The best side effect of Co-Creation is it brings you that much closer to your customers and creates a positive business environment. The business should not become overzealous about deploying Co-Creation. It has to make observations and decisions based on sampling size and customer type on whether to go all out with customer inputs or experiment.