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Master thesis Business Administration, Specialization: Strategy & Organization Supervisor: Prof. Dr. T. Elfring Joost de Boer Student number 1517597 Co-‐creation in the NPD-‐process The projects that the Club of Experts and Crowd of People were initiated to source for experiences and new ideas can mostly be redirected to the idea generation phase. In addition, also the Coalition of People was used to seek opportunities for possible cooperation between Company D and other organizations. For the selection of these generated ideas, several criteria were used. First, an idea was tested on its ‘fit’ with Company D: this was done to see whether it was close to Company D’s core business or not, as this gave a good indication on how easy the idea could be implemented in the existing organization. Also the content of the generated ideas appeared an important factor: “sometimes, it might be as easy as just turning a switch, and other ideas have more impact and therefore require more efforts.” Next, when the choice was to develop an idea inside the organization, the next question would be whether it would fit in one of the existing departments or that it needed a department on its own; this is of course dependent on the available competences and the expected impact an idea would have on the other businesses. When an idea was placed outside the organization, this involved a search for possible partner organizations. But, as the director business innovation explained: “These are of course beautiful models, who are theoretically valid, but in practice things just might go different than expected. It is dependent on many coincidences”. Considering the feedback that is provided to the stakeholders who participated in co-‐creation projects, the interviewees are kind of proud: “We have a tight connection between the sessions and the process afterwards. During the projects themselves, we already respond on ideas and indicate what we think of them by coding them with a certain color. After the projects, we often involve a group of people who were actively participating and bringing good ideas, by inviting them for an offline session, some sort of brainstorm. So we are quite involved in providing feedback and involving participants afterwards”, the director business innovation explains. Regarding the use of the Crowd of People for the purpose of internal co-‐creation, it is more difficult to redirect it to a certain phase in the NPD-‐process. Mostly because it had the purpose of process improvement, there was no obvious NPD-‐phase it could be placed in. Figure 4.8 illustrates the use of different types of co-‐creation, not directly placing the use of co-‐creation for internal sourcing in any of the phases. Figure 4.8 | Company D: types of co-creation and purpose in the NPD-process Crowd of People Idea Generation Idea Selection: Fit with business/ departments Crowd of People Process improvement Topic defined by employees Club of Experts: Idea Generation Internal development No co-creation used Idea generation Idea development Idea diffusion 49
Master thesis Business Administration, Specialization: Strategy & Organization Supervisor: Prof. Dr. T. Elfring Joost de Boer Student number 1517597 Results and measurement The director product strategy claimed that one of the most interesting results of co-‐creation appeared to be its function as an “eye opener that directly drew our attention to reconsider what we were doing”. In addition, one of the outcomes of the internal co-‐creation project was related to improving the departure gate: the employees from Ground Services generated a great deal of ideas on how the gate of the future should look like. Further, several process improvements were made, thanks to the ideas that were generated in co-‐creation sessions. Unfortunately, the director business innovation adds, “Considering the Ground Services project, I am referring to the past because we have stopped the project. Huge cuts had to be made across the entire organization, of which Ground Services was one. That is unfortunate, but no matter how good the generated ideas are, it is considered as ‘cash out’ at a certain moment”. There were two ways of measuring the results of co-‐creation. The first one was the degree of participation: “Reports were made on how many participants would sign up for the online platforms, and how many people actually contributed to the platform; the number of participants is an important indicator of customer loyalty”. The other way to measure the results of co-‐creation was by involving employees of the controlling department. They would then estimate what the actual revenues would be of certain generated ideas once they would have been developed and implemented. This was of course an estimation, but it also provided involved decision makers with a more substantial idea of the achieved results of co-‐creation would look like. Encountered difficulties using co-‐creation One of the difficulties while using co-‐creation was the nature of Company D’s existence. Being an airliner, margins are relatively low which results in a day-‐to-‐day focus. Because: flights and production will always continue, even when not all the seats in the plane are booked. Therefore, the operations perspective is highly important: “We are a highly operational company, so if we would only be looking at things that will matter in 2020, we would have gone out of business already.” Why this results in a possible problem, is filled in by his colleague in charge with product strategy: “Co-‐creation tends to focus more on what we will be doing tomorrow, than what we are doing today. However, its strength is that if you do it right you immediately create commitment between the operations and commercial departments.” However, the director business innovation warns that in unstable times, innovation projects are always under pressure: “We have had times when we were losing money, about 1,5 billion. At that moment, you have to do something in order to survive; no matter what the results of co-‐creation or innovation projects are”. § 4.1.1 | Case analysis: Company E Purpose of co-‐creation Company E uses co-‐creation for two purposes: the first is to reestablish the involvedness and contact with its customers, and second to generate new products/services and improve existing ones. As the online marketeer explains: “We started this out of interest in with our customers. When we started the company seventeen years ago, our clients were exactly the same as the people that were working at our company. But that tended to change over the years: we managed to keep in touch with a share of our customers, but not 50
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