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."