Five Factors to Consider Before Co-Creating with Consumers
You have an idea, a giant of a brainwave that’s going to take the world by storm and net your company squillions. But you’re still nervous and wonder whether it really will fly with your customers.
So to minimize risk and to see if your idea is really as good as you think it is, you enlist their help as co-creators. After all you’ve studied the open innovation landscape and seen how companies like Nike, Nivea and Kellogg’s have successfully worked with the crowd and view customers as amongst their biggest assets.
But before you jump in consider the following points to help you shape your co-creation strategy:
1) Who are your co-creators? Consumers are a heterogeneous bunch; there are early adopters, frequent and infrequent customers, competitors’ customers, long-standing and new customers. Will you involve all, one or some of these groupings?
2) Why are you co-creating? Be clear about your innovation focus from the outset. Is it to solve a specific challenge or problem you may be facing? Are you creating a new product from scratch or refining an existing one? Or do you just want to trawl for insights and input into some of your ideas?
3) How long will you engage the crowd for? On ad ad-hoc basis, for one-off projects or continuously? Bear in mind that if you are engaging the crowd for long periods of time you may have to think about ways to incentivize and motivate them.
4) What incentives to offer? Some participants are motivated by material rewards such as money and goods, others by interest and intellectual curiosity, and still more by both these extrinsic and intrinsic motives. Whatever you do, don’t take their participation for granted.
5) Where in the innovation process should co-creation take place? At the ideation stage? Design?Testing?… and so on. Where will your crowd co-create to give you the maximum benefit?
Add your Comment
[LOGIN FIRST] if you're already a member.fields are required.