Leading the transformation to co‐creation of value

Leading businesses are learning how to use the engagement experiences of individuals and communities as the new basis of their value creation for customers. This paper aims to look at this issue.

To initiate and implement this co‐creation model, especially in established organizations, the paper proposes adopting a new mindset.

The paper finds that once leaders recognize the “interactions among individuals everywhere in the system” as the new locus of value creation, it stands to reason that organizations must be designed to function around them.

In the co‐creation paradigm, value is a function of experiences other than the product itself, such as web platforms and environments for consumer interactions with the product and with a community of other users. Intuit's www.intuitlabs.com is another good illustration; there, Intuit's internal engineers get a fast, direct connection to customers, and the community of customers connects to the “makers” of Intuits offerings.

Becoming a co‐creative organization is impossible without the active involvement of managers at all levels and every employee who interacts with customers – from the call center operator to the service mechanic, from the sales representative to the logistics manager, from the software engineer to the product developer.