co-creation opens up many sources of operational innovation 

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The company can co-create with any “protagonist” in the system: customer, employee, supplier, other stakeholder, e.g., regulators....and can innovate anything: a product or service or business model, an operational process/interaction (externally facing or internal), a management process (e.g. strategy, resource management).

The net result is transformative – 

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The net result is transformative – engaged individuals and a powerful, co-creative enterprise. In organizations, co-creation can be used in a variety of ways, from the very small to the very big. Co-creation applies at the level of a single operational process inside the company. In that sense, it is the new reengineering or the new quality. This is operational innovation. Any employee who participates in a business process – i.e., anybody who works inside an organization of any kind – can benefit from co-creating the process he or she participates in. For example, Dell has moved from having weak customer service processes to co-creating its customers' service experience. The Japanese apparel companyWacoal involves very busy young Japanese women in co-designing their clothes.

But co-creation goes beyond the design of single processes in operations. You can transform your entire business through co-creation. If you're a senior executive eager to dramatically improve the performance of your business, or if you're a performance or change management person functionally in charge of supporting your company's transformation, you will benefit from co-creating your transformation path with your customers and employees.Starbucks, to give one example, changed its strategy in response to many ideas and insights gained from engagement with its employees, customers, and other stakeholders, involving a larger and larger set of constituencies in its strategy. If you're a C-level executive attempting to formulate a new strategy for your business, or a member of a strategic planning group trying to support the development of that new strategy, you'll discover a new, more participative way of doing so, by relying less on data you generate yourself and more on the field intelligence and motivation of your employees, customers, and partners. Nike has outgunned Adidas in the running shoe market by motivating people to run.

Ultimately, you can redefine an entire ecosystem of business and change the role of your organization in society through co-creation. More and more CEOs are adopting co-creation as the way to redefine the role of their business in their industry, and more broadly in society, often mobilizing large group of internal and external people in doing so. Caja Navarra, a small Spanish savings bank, is changing the rules of banking as we know it by redefining how people think of a bank and its social role. Crushpad, a do-it-yourself winery in San Francisco, is building an entire ecosystem of wine lovers and wine businesses by letting them co-create their wine through their web site and other technologies.

There are successful examples of co-creation in every part of the world and nearly every industry and function.

THE result is reduced cost and risk for all parties engaged 

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The business case is the result of the new experience (not the driver).

Engagement platforms enable new interactions

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The design of co-creative interactions is quite different from process design.

value from experiences is greatest when there is interactive engagement

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Individuals supplier (employees, customers, partners) are involved, not passive recipients of processes staged by the company for them. Most processes dial out engagement and constrain value; focus should shift to interactions.

Human experience is the key starting point of value creation...

You can start anywhere in an ecosystem: customer, supplier, user community, call center agents, web people, service engineers, marketing people... Many experiences offer sources of value that go untapped.

What is co-creation?

Experience co-creation (ECC) is a major re-think on how businesses create value. It involves redefining the way organizations engage individuals in value creation, especially employees and internal stakeholders, but also customers, suppliers, and related external stakeholders and communities. It is about organizations unleashing the creative energy of people by inviting and enabling them to interact with them differently.