Co-creation is a form of collaboration that allows companies and teams to involve stakeholders specifically in innovation processes. It’s a kind of crowdsourcing for idea generation and prototyping.
Co-creation takes place over an extended period. The method can even be set up as a permanent process that is maintained even with changing personnel.
Examples of Co-Creation
In recent years, many companies have established long-term communities to help develop new products. Examples can be found at Lego Ideas (ideas for new Lego models come from the community) or at Migipedia (customers request new product developments at Migros).
The process of idea generation can also be set up in short-term sprints. Innovation Contests are both marketing events and a short, intensive basis for new ideas. For example, IKEA has been collecting ideas for new stuffed animals for several years through the Family Drawing Competition.
Another strategy is to specifically seek out co-creation partners to support idea generation and prototyping. This is how the Creative Kids do it, as well as many companies that specifically invite stakeholders for co-creation.
Co-Creation with Design Thinking
Co-creation is closely linked to the Design Thinking process. One possibility is to repeatedly challenge the co-creators with new questions, which they then work on using Design Thinking methods. The co-creators try to understand the problem, generate and test ideas, and possibly even implement them.
Co-Creation in Design Thinking
However, co-creation can also be embedded as part of Design Thinking. Here, the community primarily helps with idea generation and testing. The co-creation can go through several iterations and very often includes initial testing.
The definition of problems and the definitive implementation, however, is driven by a core group or a different group of people.
Experiences with Creative Kids
This summer, I had the opportunity to be part of the second co-creator phase of the Creative Kids. Here, the core team specifically sought out co-creators who work in several groups to address important questions or prototype and implement concrete concerns. With the help of the co-creators, foundations were laid for strategic decisions. We also completed concrete tasks such as organizing the Digital Day or conducting a successful wemakeit campaign.
The co-creators work in weekly sprints and organize themselves into individual working groups. In addition to the weekly group meetings, there is a meeting with all co-creators every week to gather information. The co-creators organize themselves via Trello and communicate via Slack and Zoom. Miro is often used as a shared virtual workspace and Google Drive as a shared file storage. Of course, you can also organize yourself well in Microsoft Office 365 with Teams.
Working as a co-creator is extremely exciting for me. The predominantly virtual work had flow and is excellently organized among the co-creators. In non-Covid times, one would certainly conduct more physical workshops to further increase focus on certain work steps. This year that wasn’t possible, but we still moved at a brisk pace purely virtually and processed an incredible number of ideas.
