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Master thesis Business Administration, Specialization: Strategy & Organization Supervisor: Prof. Dr. T. Elfring Joost de Boer Student number 1517597 equivalent, collaborative nature between organizations and their stakeholders, their pursuit for shared value, along with the multi-‐sided applicability in the innovation process are mostly distinctive factors when comparing it with other and earlier forms of collaboration and customer involvement. § 5.1 PURPOSE OF CO-CREATION Key findings: two new purposes were identified that were not yet mentioned in co-‐creation literature: the sourcing for potential alliances inside and outside the value chain, and the internal use of co-‐creation among employees. Considering the purpose of co-‐creation and its use within organizations, the literature in Chapter 2 refers to two fields: marketing and innovation. Two emerging paradigms were found that elaborate for its use: marketing literature uses the service-‐dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2004), while innovation literature emphasizes its use from the perspective of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003). The empirical research found support for the use of co-‐creation by organizations for both these purposes; however, two additional purposes were found in the empirical research that had not been mentioned in literature on marketing, innovation or co-creation itself. Firstly, the three largest organizations in the research used the Coalition of Parties in to search for potential strategic alliances or partnerships with other organizations both inside and outside their direct value chain. Although the involved participants referred to this as co-‐creation, the sourcing for potential partnerships with other organizations shows many similarities with concepts such as joint venturing and strategic alliances that are broadly discussed in existing management literature. Further research should point out whether the use of this form of co-‐creation really is different from traditional joint venture and alliance literature, or that it is just another name for something that has been around for a long time. Secondly, co-‐creation was also used by one organization to improve its operational processes together with its employees. Interviewees argued that when organizations become larger, it becomes possible to use co-creation as a way of collaboration inside the organization. In addition, other organizations also mentioned this potential use, but had not been using it themselves. Although the available literature did not mention the use of co-‐creation for internal purposes such as process improvement, it can be argued that the sense of dialogue and the use of online tools makes co-‐creation a highly suitable way for collaborative creation in the organization itself. Here again, additional research is needed to explore the opportunities of using co-‐creation for this purpose. § 5.2 INVOLVEMENT OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PARTIES Key findings: although difficulties in cooperation between different departments inside the organization were expected, almost none were found. However, there did appear to be problems when responsibility had to be 65
Master thesis Business Administration, Specialization: Strategy & Organization Supervisor: Prof. Dr. T. Elfring Joost de Boer Student number 1517597 taken in the further development of co-‐created concepts. Next, when considering the parties that are involved in co-‐creation, it became clear that it is better to speak of ‘stakeholders’ rather than just ‘customers’. Internal parties: difficulties in realization, not in collaboration Based on the results of the literature review: (1) the internally involved parties were expected to be mostly the marketing-‐ and innovation departments of organizations, and (2) the existence of specialist cultures (Goold & Campbell, 2002) among those departments was expected to provide difficulties, as each department in an organization has its own expertise, responsibilities and focus. When comparing the results of the literature review with the empirical findings, firstly, marketing and innovation departments indeed proved to be the parties that were internally most involved in co-‐creation processes. However, often other departments would be involved as well – mostly departments that had a clear affinity with the involved topic of the co-‐creation project. Although expected, there were no direct signals of problems in the cooperation between the departments. Often, marketing and innovation would have their own scope and responsibilities without directly experiencing difficulties. However, it was found that in several organizations problems rose after the use of co-‐creation: once co-‐created ideas or concepts had to be developed, it was often not clear who, or which department, would be responsible for the development of the generated content. Especially when generated ideas did not directly fit into one of the existing business lines of the organization, there would be no direct party taking the responsibility and the risks of developing one of the generated ideas – eventually leaving the idea for what it was. Although this problem was not directly accounted for in co-‐creation literature, the open innovation paradigm argues that organizations should consider to spin-‐off ideas whenever there is no direct fit or support from within the organizations and/or its core capabilities. Other solutions may be found in making the involved parties (both internal and external) in the co-‐creation project directly responsible for the development of the generated outcomes. External parties: stakeholders rather than customers Referring to the external involved parties, scholars mostly elaborated on the involvement of lead-‐users in co-creation processes, later complemented by ‘average’ users to evaluate and test the ideas that were generated by lead-‐users. Only few other scholars spoke about stakeholders instead of merely referring to customers. When analyzing the empirical data, it appeared that most organizations indeed involved lead-‐users in their co-creation projects – however, these lead-‐users were most of the time involved together with topic experts and thought leaders. The ‘average’ or ‘mainstream’ consumers that in literature were dictated the role of testing and evaluating, sometimes also appeared to be used to generate new ideas: it signals an overlap between lead-users and ‘mainstream’ customers and their role in the co-‐creation process. This is different from Von Hippel’s (1986) assumption that mainstream customers are singularly involved for analyzing and testing purposes, and can most probably be explained by the technological developments that allow initiators to process and select a larger number of generated ideas. 66
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