This collaboration can be THE way to discover new market opportunities, push product branding in new directions, or establish a presence in a completely new area. However, co-creation isn’t always a walk in the park.
At Braineet, we have helped hundreds of companies to achieve co-creation with their customers or employees. In this article, we will show you successful co-creation initiatives and some key takeaways.
Getting co-creation right takes careful foresight and planning, as well as a deep knowledge of a brand’s customer base. We’ll look at how 12 businesses are succeeding, but first, a quick reminder: What exactly is customer co-creation? Co-creation refers to inviting stakeholders (usually customers or employees) to participate in a design or problem-solving process to produce a mutually valued outcome.
These outcomes can include things like new product ideas, ways to overcome delivery chain problems, or even technical solutions to complex manufacturing questions.
Co-creation also includes plenty of fun, light exchanges, like musicians using Twitter to take fan suggestions regarding album titles, or football clubs asking for feedback on their rebranding efforts.
Customer co-creation can lead to some great innovations, such as Etihad Airways’ customizable cabin interiors. However, co-creation can also produce some real head-scratchers, like ‘Boaty McBoatface’, the crowdsourced name for a UK environmental research vessel.
12 examples of successful co-creation initiatives
1. Unilever
Unilever is one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, owning over 400 well-recognized brands, including Dove, Lipton, Best Foods, and many more.
With operations in 190 countries and products used by over 2.5 billion people on a daily basis, Unilever has a massive pool of customers from which to source ideas and solutions to product development questions.
To put this resource to use, Unilever actively looks to its customer base for product solutions, asking startups, academics, designers and customers for ideas and suggestions.
Through its Open Innovation platform, launched in 2010, Unilever presents specific challenges to the public, encouraging individuals to submit responses for potential adoption by the company.
These include topics like intelligent product packaging, oil oxidation technology, freezing and cooling systems, and other areas. If a suggestion is successful, the submitter can be offered a commercial contract for their solution, as well as professional recognition.
The Unilever platform has received a strong global response, with the company receiving over 1,000 proposals in the first half of 2012. This approach has also helped develop a more open culture: now, over 60% of Unilever’s research projects involve external collaboration.
Unilever’s approach to co-creation reflects the value of open innovation and shows the potential uses of crowdsourcing to solve problems – even complex problems requiring technical knowledge and expertise.
2. IKEA
In early 2018, Swedish furniture and home goods retailer IKEA launched ‘Co-Create IKEA’, a digital platform encouraging customers and fans to develop new products.
The co-creation platform at IKEA focuses on the following four areas: Asking customers for product idea suggestions
Running IKEA Bootcamps to work with entrepreneurs
Collaborating with university students on product solutions
establishing connections with international innovation labs If a suggestion for furniture or product design is successful, IKEA may license the technology or agree to invest in future products. For designers and technically talented fans, this creates a strong incentive: to gain exposure through the world’s largest furniture retailer.
This approach has led to many thousands of customer suggestions, including variations on basic furniture designs like this one:
Participants are also eligible for cash rewards if their ideas work and are selected. Even more helpfully, IKEA provides resources like test labs and prototype shops to help customers develop and fine-tune their suggestions.
For IKEA, co-creation helps put crowd wisdom to work in product innovation, allowing the company to harness useful design insights. This creates real market advantages for the company and contributes to a community of dedicated customers.
3. Sodexo
Innov’Hub, Sodexo’s collaborative platform that supports innovation challenges and best practice catalogues on a global and local scale, was chosen by Braineet in 2016 to launch. Sodexo is a Fortune 500 company with a presence in 64 countries and is the leading provider of integrated food, facilities management. Sodexo’s co-creation platform focuses on four specific areas:
Foster the collective intelligence of Sodexo employees to generate and realize innovative ideas.
Support the selection process by reviewing and evaluating the ideas.
Leverage global view to identify practices with scalability opportunities.
Co-create with employees & clients by creating spaces where employees can innovate with each client.
To embrace this ambition, Sodexo built, with our crowdsourcing software, a global platform to empower every Sodexo collaborator to share and realize innovative ideas and launch crowdsourcing initiatives. This allows them to fuel the Group’s long-term strategy, get visibility and find inspiration from other ideas within the Group, interact and collaborate with fellow colleagues worldwide.
This approach empowers thousands of employees with suggestions of ideas, best practices, experimentations with an amazing NPS (+60) like this one:
Sodexo’s embrace of co-creation has revealed internal talents and also empower innovation at a global scale.
4. DeWalt
DeWalt, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of power tools, has a well-established customer base. In 2015, DeWalt established an Insight Community for its customers to contribute product development ideas.
Since its establishment, DeWalt’s Insight Community has grown to include more than 12,000 users, including 8,000 professional tradespeople, and 4,000 home users. This diverse group of contributors ensures DeWalt receives a helpful range of product suggestions.
With this platform, DeWalt engages customers in the product development cycle, testing packaging and design, as well as website usability. The Insight Community helps create improvements to DeWalt’s products, such as a new range of cordless hammer drills.
DeWalt Group Product Manager Ward Smith is aware of the significance of open innovation in today’s world. “Competition is fierce,” he says. “Everyone’s trying to launch more tools, faster. You need a fast and accurate way to be more reactive in the marketplace”.
This commitment to open innovation hasn’t just been entertaining for customers – it’s also meant big savings for DeWalt. In fact, estimates suggest the company has saved almost $6 million in research costs due to its Insight Community.
5. Lego
Of all the examples in this list, no other company better illustrates the power of customer co-creation than LEGO.
LEGO has always had a reputation for creativity. However, the company’s commitment to innovation helped rescue the brand from a challenging financial situation in the early 2000s, the result of brand dilution, over-extended product lines, and excessive growth.
A new approach to open-source product development and the creation of LEGO Ideas were the outcomes of a leadership change in 2004. Since then, the crowdsourcing platform has received suggestions from over 1 million people, with fans voting on the most popular ideas.
In return for contributing a winning idea, the creator can give final approval for the end product, be recognized on all packaging and marketing, and even earn a percentage of product sales.
