Co-creation is a business model that allows the masses to work with mega brands and create their own products. Imagine being able to decide the flavour for a chip or designing a mobile phone specifically targeted at you. It's possible, it's happening, and YOLANDE D'MELLO tells you how you can dive right into this democracy of ideas
Co-creation is a business model that allows the masses to work with mega brands and create their own products. Imagine being able to decide the flavour for a chip or designing a mobile phone specifically targeted at you. It's possible, it's happening, and Yolande D'mello tells you how you can dive right into this democracy of ideas
Sagar Devrukhkar, a technical support consultant at an IT firm in Mumbai spends his free time listening to pop music. One year ago, the 25 year-old hadn't a clue that a casual flirtation with flavours would win him a Rs 50 lakh prize and put his mug on the cover of a national wafer brand. 
Co-creation can add value to an experience
An Internet-enabled kiosk that is manned by farmers to provide other
farmers with information about weather, soil and prevailing prices of
vegetables and commodities, e-Choupal has a sanchalak (representative)
trained by multi-business conglomerate ITC, for six months, to use the
technology to collect and disseminate relevant information to farmers in
other villages via the e-Choupal. This eliminates the need for the middleman
who is otherwise the only conduit between the farmer and the information
he needs to harvest a good crop. 
Co-creating products tailor-made for India
Cell phone brand Nokia launched a project with students of the Srishti
School of Art, Design and Technology in Bengaluru, using an ethnographic
approach to conceptualise new ideas for consumer goods targeted at the
Indian market. This pop art rendition of goddess Durga can hold kitchen
cutlery, and is called Kitchen Warrior.
With Mango Mastana, the winning flavour in the Your Lays Flavor contest that PepsiCo snacks launched in July 2010, Devrukhkar and PepsiCo just became yet another example of co-creation -- a trend in which products and services are conceptualised and executed in direct collaboration with their most valued target audience -- you.
Mastana Mango, the winning flavour ended up on top with 1.3 million votes from foodies who logged on to the Your Lays Flavour website.
The Lays Give Us Your Dillicious Flavour contest required contestants to send in a flavour concept, which was going to be presented to the research and development team of PepsiCo, that would be eventually manufactured. "When I heard about the contest, I decided to play with contrasting flavours so that there would be a bit of a surprise in each bite. I finally settled on a sweet-cum-salty mango concept, which the company then finalised in a recipe. It's tough to believe my flavour will now be tasted by the entire nation!" says Devrukhkar.
His excitement is understandable. It's not often that you get to be part of creating something that you actually have a stake in. But then, that's what co-creation is all about, as Professor Venkat Ramaswamy, co-author of The Power of Co-Creation, published in 2010 by Free Press, explains.
You are the boss
The term was coined by Ramaswamy, a professor of marketing at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, along with co-author Francis Gouillart. He breaks it down for us in a telephonic chat from Dubai, in between meetings with the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. "Co-creation redefines the way organisations engage with individuals -- customers, employees, suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders -- bringing them into the process of value creation and engaging them in enriched experiences."
Too much jargon? All it really means is that you contribute to the design and concept of products that you will ultimately consume. As Ramaswamy puts it, "What Lays did with the 'make your own flavour' contest was an initiative that a lot of multinational corporations are now undertaking to build an interest among consumers.
They do this by making them a part of the process."
The idea makes the consumer part of the product-creation process. That's different from the old-school method, where the extent of a consumer's involvement ended with filling up a feedback form after testing a sample.
Co-creation works backwards. You, the focus group, is asked what you would like to consume, and then made part of the process of creating that very product.
The concept was also in operation at the 2008 Nokia Design Studio project -- Srishti Only Planet in Bengaluru.
In collaboration with Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Nokia used an ethnographic approach to conceptualise new design ideas for mobile phones and consumer goods targeted at the Indian market. Company designers mentored the students to create prototypes of 16 product concepts -- a pop art rendition of goddess Durga that holds kitchen cutlery (Kitchen Warrior), an image colour de-coder software (Anubhav Yantra) and a mobile software that lets you shoot and edit video to make a movie with your phone (Sholay), among other things.
For you, by you
But it's not all brand-centric. As the ITC Ltd. initiative, e-Choupal demonstrates, co-creation can also add value -- continuously.
An Internet-enabled kiosk that is manned by farmers to provide other farmers with information about weather, soil and prevailing prices of vegetables and commodities, e-Choupal is currently active in 10,000 villages across 15 Indian states. The aim is to cover one lakh villages by 2012.
Each village has a sanchalak (representative), who is trained by a multi-business conglomerate ITC for six months to use the technology to collect and disseminate relevant information to farmers in other villages via the e-Choupal. This eliminates the need for the middleman, who is otherwise the only conduit between the farmer and the information he needs to harvest a good crop.
Sailesh Naik, general manager and head of e-Choupal, has been part of the project for the past five years.
"Before we came along, the only way farmers could find out about recent prices of commodities, was through middlemen at the sabzi mandi. That allowed the middleman to make the highest profit; the farmers were left high and dry," he says.
Not anymore, though. The initiative took off in 2000 in Madhya Pradesh, and has been welcomed by farmers since. "Initially, they were apprehensive, but when they saw the economic leverage they got, they were open to learning and using the e-Choupal," he says. Soon, it might be accessible to farmers via cell phones too, a possibility Naik is pondering.
Without the farmers' technical know-how about government schemes and crop loans, ITC's initiative would have come to naught. "You need to interact with your end-users to be able to help them," Naik explains, adding, "We know what they want and we can provide exactly that -- there is no guesswork. It's a win-win situation for both parties."
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Value for everybody
As Ramaswamy says, adding value to an experience is paramount, which is exactly what the likes of Luke Sequeira are doing. The 25 year-old North Goa-based entrepreneur has just flagged off a hush-hush initiative that uses co-creation to create mileage for photographers and propel itself, in collaboration with Fernanda Cervant ufffds from Ecuador and Freya Ledda from Canada.
"We are currently gathering followers for our project that will launch on February 14, 2012. The aim is to capture candid photographs of couples," he lets on.
"We work with photographers and take permission from one half of a couple to allow the photographer to click them when they are out on a date. The photographer decides how he wants to conduct the shoot, and shoot the duo. We then give the photograph to the couple and upload the images on a photoblog, so it's easily accessible to everyone."
The photographers work pro-bono; no money is exchanged for being a part of the blog. "While we provide the theme, complete creative freedom is given to the photographer, and as more people see the site, the idea travels across the world, generating mileage for the photographer, who is now part of creating something that benefits him/her," says Sequeira.
At the end of the one-year project, Sequiera plans to either publish the images gathered in the form of a coffee table book, or use it as raw material for a stop motion film (an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own).
Like him, Ramaswamy believes that people have only just discovered the power of co-creation. "A couple of years ago, it was just being discovered by marketing representatives in companies. Today, a Google search of the term yields over 25 million hits. While it started as a business model, the concept will rapidly be absorbed in the public sector," he believes.
Co-creation
Is premised on the notion of meaningful engagement with customers in a one-on-one basis. It also depends on how meaningful the act of creating is and the environment in which the act of creation takes place, explains Professor Ramaswamy. Co-creation requires transparency, access, dialogue, and reflexivity, in increasing order of importance. While the first three are easier to achieve, the fourth i.e reflexivity requires constant communication between the customer and client. This way, the value of the product is enhanced, as is the brand value of the company.
Crowd-sourcing
Is premised on the notion of inclusivity and open innovation. Crowd-sourcing taps into expertise and creativity located anywhere in the world. This ability to "access resources outside the firm" has been made possible because of advances in communication and information technologies. Viewed from the perspective of people who are able to participate in it, firms are more inclusive now than they have been before. In other words, companies have expanded the scope of "togetherness" with their customers.
How Lego allowed fans to co-build
LEGO, the toy building brick, quite literally puts bits and pieces in the hands of their customers and inviting them to create something. In 2004, four LEGO master builders were invited to develop the next generation of LEGO robotics. A year later, 10 more joined to test what had been developed. This year 100 more spots opened up, for which nearly 10,000 people applied. Next, LEGO invited major corporations and organisations to join the developers' circle. The initiative was called LEGO mindstorms.
Who makes a good co-creator? We ask Professor Ramaswamy
"This is a good question. I use the metaphor of colours to characterise co-creation: Think of the enterprise (ecosystem capability based sensibilities) as the colour blue, and stakeholders (experience based sensibilities) as the colour yellow. The goal is to blend the two to get green (where the co-creation opportunities lie). Good co-creators should have both. As people on the enterprise side connect as users (e.g., in the case of mobile devices), and those on the user side connect as platform providers, there is more effective co-creation. "
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