Co-Creation Examples: Benefits of Collaborating With Customers

Co-creation (or co-design) is a business strategy in which a company involves customers in the product development and decision-making process, allowing them to offer ideas and input, give feedback, or choose from a range of potential options.

The co-creation process is in contrast to more traditional, company-centric product development, in which the company keeps the new product internal (and often secret) until the official unveiling. Co-creation can offer companies significant benefits, including better ideas and product innovation, more consumer-centric products, and a stronger relationship with their end users.

While the co-creation strategy typically refers to a collaborative process between company and customer, some business analysts also use the term to describe partnerships between companies and other co-creators, like outside vendors, agencies, and other stakeholders.

Co-creation emphasizes the co-production of value between a company and a customer. Consider just a few of the advantages of co-creation:

1. 1. More unique ideas: Customer co-creation is a crowdsourcing method that opens companies up to a much wider range of ideas and voices. It encourages a more collaborative brainstorming and ideation process that can lead to more creativity and open innovation, true value creation, and overall better products. Co-creation efforts can serve as a valuable part of market research, giving companies a competitive advantage over others that don’t incorporate the ideas of customers.
2. 2. More needs-focused products: Sometimes, companies can get so focused on the products they’re making they forget to consider the needs of their customers. Co-creation projects help alleviate this problem by involving customers in the process, resulting in more customer-focused goods. This creates value for potential buyers and helps companies achieve higher customer satisfaction, increasing the potential for higher sales and higher customer retention.
3. 3. Stronger relationships between companies and customers: When companies start a collaborative dialogue with potential customers, it improves the relationship between the parties. It also creates an ecosystem of mutual respect and empowerment. Customers are much more likely to trust and approve of co-creative companies since they can see the company values the customer experience. This results in better sales and long-term customer loyalty, as well as more word-of-mouth recommendations.

Founder Sara Blakely used the power of co-creation to develop her first underwear prototype in the early stages of starting Spanx. She asked friends and family members to serve as casual focus groups to test her product. Sara then listened to their feedback, allowing it to influence and shape the final design. By incorporating customer values into her design process, Sara made a successful product consumers wanted.

Under CEO Howard Schultz, Starbucks launched a co-creative platform called My Starbucks Idea, which enabled customers to post new product ideas, suggest improvements to the company’s operations, rate others’ posts, and comment with additional feedback. Starbucks administrators reviewed the highest-rated ideas and incorporated many of them into the company’s business model. This resulted in a co-creation of value between the company and consumers.

Get the MasterClass Annual Membership for exclusive access to video lessons taught by business luminaries, including Sara Blakely, Chris Voss, Robin Roberts, Bob Iger, Howard Schultz, Anna Wintour, and more.