Characteristics and Potential for Successful Co-Creation

Abstract

Co-creation, an active end-users involvement in product development process, has been recognized as an effective way of minimizing risk of misinterpretation of end-user needs and achieving product success. Furthermore, high level of co-creation has seemed to create high perceived value to products. With an aim of encouraging many more firms to involve their end-users in the product development process, a quantitative tool developed to help the firms evaluate their readiness and potential for co-creation is presented in this paper. Important characteristics for co-creation have been established from the literature and have been classified with the help of expert opinion into three different levels: must-have, should-have and nice-to-have. The firms that fulfill all the must-have characteristics are ready for co-creation, and their potential is evaluated from the should-have and nice-to-have characteristics. An exploratory case study on three shoe manufacturers was conducted for illustration.