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Master thesis Business Administration, Specialization: Strategy & Organization Supervisor: Prof. Dr. T. Elfring Joost de Boer Student number 1517597 Almost all employees of Company B are involved in co-‐creation whenever this appears to be relevant to his or her work. In addition, salespersons are also involved in the co-‐creation projects. They are believed to generate important input, because they operate in the frontline every day. Salespersons are the face of Company B and are constantly in contact with (potential) customer, knowing what customers want and perhaps equally important: they know what will sell and what not. Because of their day-‐to-‐day involvement and contact with customers, they are given the opportunity to translate customer input into ideas that are valuable to the organization However, co-‐creation also provides Company B with difficulties considering internal cooperation, as it is dependent on its larger holding organization for its technological resources. Therefore, it is also dependent on the holding’s current technological capabilities. As Company B aims to continuously develop new products and services that adapt to their ‘Society’s’ needs, it sometimes happens that the holding company cannot provide them with the right technological solutions. “So then, we are somewhat forced to turn to third parties to develop things for us. This however also has its disadvantages, as it can lead to proliferation in the systems we use. So we are continuously looking for the right balance here. At the moment that the holding’s IT department is able to deal in a more flexible way with our requirements, we can increase the development these specific things in-‐house”. Referring to the involvement of external parties, Company B involves different parties for different purposes. It aims at involving the ‘Society’ it has created as much as possible, at different phases of the NPD-‐process. In early phases often leading edge youngsters are asked for their contributions and ideas; later on in the process, a more mainstream audience is involved. Next to involvement in the NPD-‐process, this can for example also be done when testing existing products or services, to make sure they are still interesting for the target population. Used types of co-‐creation Company B has, since it started using co-‐creation three years ago, been using two types of co-‐creation: the Club of Experts and Crowd of People. As already indicated, it mostly involves leading edge youngsters, or lead users, in the early phases of the NPD-‐process. Leading edge youngsters are here used to generate new ideas on future or existing products and services of Company B. In addition, when aiming at involving a larger number and more mainstream kind of users for the purpose of testing new or existing ideas, products and services, a Crowd of People is used. When considering the openness of these types of co-‐creation, the Club of Experts obviously consists of a group of people that were selected on their ability to be in the lead of other, more mainstream users, anticipating on their future trends and needs. In the Crowd of People, any customer of Company B is free to join and to participate. Although these parties differ in the parties they involve, they both score the same on the axis of ownership. All the generated content is the direct intellectual property of Company B – only later on in the process, participants can use the outcome of co-‐creation. Figure 4.3 provides an overview of the previous section. 39
Master thesis Business Administration, Specialization: Strategy & Organization Supervisor: Prof. Dr. T. Elfring Joost de Boer Student number 1517597 Figure 4.3 | Company B: purpose, scope, involved parties and types of co-creation Openness Crowd of People: Purpose: Testing, fine-tuning Scope: Focused scope Internal parties: Marketing, development, communication External parties: Mainstream youngsters, customers Club of Experts: Purpose: Idea generation Scope: Sometimes open, sometimes focussed Internal parties: Marketing, development, salespersons External parties: Leading edge youngsters Community of kindred spirits: not used Coalition of parties: not used Ownership Co-‐creation in the NPD-‐process The previous section already indicated that Company B uses co-‐creation at multiple phases of the NPD-‐process. In the idea generation phase, lead users are involved in a Club of Experts to think of new products, services and concepts. To make sure that ideas generated by lead-‐users also match the needs of non-‐lead users, its outcomes are combined with market research and also tested by the Crowd of People. Before continuing to the development phase, Company B selects generated ideas using two selection criteria. First, before co-‐creation sessions are initiated, a set of benchmarks is determined that the outcomes will have to meet, independent from the content of the idea itself. ”It starts with benchmarks, while at the same time providing enough freedom to develop new ideas”, the development manager says. Secondly, Company B every year states an OGSMT (Objectives, Goals, Strategy, Measurement and Tactics) that withholds the entire strategy for a year, on a single page. Each year, the OGSMT holds five strategies. When the outcome of a co-creation session provided completely new ideas which were not anticipated, the ideas are tested by Company B’s mission, positioning and brand values, along with its OGSMT; if there is no match, than an idea will simply not be realized. Next, Company B’s customers are involved at different moments in the development phase. For instance, concepts are tested during the stage of development by making prototypes of services available in an online test environment for customers: “It is a continuous process, where we have to make sure that everyone can think along, without losing an eye on the business case”. However, the actual development of the ideas is still done by Company B itself. The proposition manager explains: “We are inspired by the customer, but we also have ideas of our own. So we use the input of our customers, but at the same time we make sure that a new service or proposition has the flavor we want it to have”. Finally, in the idea diffusion phase, co-‐creation is also used to involve customers in the development of communication campaigns. This is mostly done with a ‘Crowd of People’ – be it that access and participation is 40
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