Building the Co-Creative Enterprise

Give all your stakeholders a bigger say, and they’ll lead you to better insights, revenues, and profits.

by

Venkat Ramaswamy

and

Francis Gouillart

by

Venkat Ramaswamy

and

Francis Gouillart

From the Magazine (October 2010)

Summary.

Reprint: R1010J

These days more companies are inviting customers to help them design products. Now a few are taking things further and including their other stakeholders—employees, suppliers, distributors, and even regulators—in “co-creation” efforts, too. By focusing on improving the experiences of everyone involved, such firms are achieving breakthrough insights, lower costs, new revenues, and new business models.

Consider how this worked at France’s La Poste, which wanted to expand package delivery and banking services in light of a decline in its mail business. La Poste had three obstacles: unmotivated union tellers, customers disgruntled by long waits, and frustrated local managers, who felt caught in between. The company set some high-level goals and invited all three groups to decide how to reach them together. To get tellers’ buy-in, La Poste gave them a say in their schedules. In workshops, the groups figured out when each office should be open and how its space should be configured. The results: a 50% decrease in waiting time, a jump in satisfaction for customers, soaring job satisfaction among tellers, and significant growth in package delivery and banking, despite the recession.

The Idea in Brief

Realizing that interactive technologies have changed people’s behavior, a small but growing number of companies have invited customers to participate directly in the design of products and services.

In doing so, these pioneers have discovered that other stakeholders, like employees and suppliers, won’t wholeheartedly participate in customer co-creation unless they’re allowed to generate value for themselves, too. That requires giving them the opportunity to design and manage their own work experiences and to help identify and solve problems.

The payoffs of the co-creative enterprise are greater productivity and creativity, lower costs and employee turnover, and new business models and sources of revenue.

Virtually all companies worry about their customers’ experiences with their products and services. But how many care about the experiences of their other stakeholders who directly or indirectly shape customers’ experiences—from employees, suppliers, and distributors, to NGOs and regulators? We mean seriously care.

A version of this article appeared in the October 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review.

VR

Venkat Ramaswamy (venkatr@umich.edu) is Hallman Fellow of Electronic Business and a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor.
FG

Francis Gouillart is president of the Experience Co-Creation Partnership, a management education and consulting firm in Concord, Massachusetts, and is co-author (with Venkat Ramaswamy) of the HBR article “Building the Co-Creative Enterprise” and the book The Power of Co-Creation.

Building the Co-Creative Enterprise

The Idea in Brief

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