We are great believers that collaboration and co-creation among businesses and between companies and customers hold much promise for future growth. There is an opportunity for collaboration and co-creation all along a company’s value chain, whether it be customers, other businesses, or suppliers.
Let’s examine some examples along the value chain.
Customers
There’s plenty of research showing that under the right circumstances and conditions customers and users can develop innovations that are both novels and have greater value for the users than what the company’s own developers come up with. Still, there hasn’t been an overwhelming agreement on how best to get it done.
A recent study by Anders Gustafsson at BI Norwegian Business School and Karlstad University in Sweden demonstrates that profitable co-creation with customers centers on the nature of the communication and interaction between the company and its customers. The researchers were after answers to two questions: How should companies communicate with their customers? When is it profitable to listen to what they say?
They tested four hypotheses:
First, that customer co-creation characterized by high-frequency communication will lead to increased product and market success.
Second, because companies often take an overly dominating role, a more evenly distributed dialogue will lead to more beneficial outcomes in an innovation process.
Third, the collaborative process of face-to-face communication and openness in critical aspects of a project will facilitate the successful development of future services and products.
Finally, new offerings will be more successful if they account for needs that have been identified from user experiences.
The researchers conducted a survey among 334 managers who all had experience with innovation to create new products and services. They selected 284 real development projects that they divided into two main groups:
207 of the projects dealt with minor improvements of products or services, while the remaining 77 projects dealt with the development of radically new products or services not previously known to the market.
The study confirms that companies can achieve better results in new product development if customers are given the right prerequisites for participating actively in the company’s development processes. Better results were defined as enhanced creativity, improved user value, and a more successful launch.
Listening
No big surprise here. For minor improvements to products and services, it is advantageous to talk frequently with the customers and have two-way communication between the company and customers. The researchers also saw that it’s wise to listen carefully to what the customers actually said. Users will often know better what is needed to make them even more satisfied with products and services. Customers will also be able to tell you what types of improvements they are willing to pay for.
When not to listen
When a company aims to develop a product or service entirely new to the market, on the other hand, you should not listen too much to the customers’ specific proposals. The researchers saw that companies that listened too much to what customers said were less successful with radical innovations than those which placed less emphasis on the contents of conversations.
“The customers base themselves to a great extent on previous experiences. The really radical solutions are difficult to imagine in advance based on experiences with current products,”Gustafsson points out.
Sounds a bit like Henry Ford’s famous century-old quote:“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” And no survey was needed on that thought, was there?
Other Businesses
Here is a great business-to-business collaboration and co-creation example that was derived from a common objective of the sustainability of product containers. In 2009, The Coca-Cola Company created the Plant- bottle, a plastic bottle partially manufactured (30%) with plant-derived materials (like sugar cane and molasses) and byproducts of sugar production in Brazil. These plants were chosen based on environmental criteria to ensure that they do not interfere with local crops. The remaining 70% of each bottle is made with materials derived from fossil fuels, such as petroleum.
The Coca-Cola Company is now striving to manufacture a bottle made of 100% plant-derived materials and plant residues. In fact, they have already developed a prototype, and are now collaborating with Heinz to use their bottling factory. The Coca-Cola Company has planned to invest $150 million in Plant BottleTM, to develop the next generation of technology for extracting sugar from plant residues such as plant stems, tree bark, and fruit peel. It is also working to make the new container water and carbon-neutral. Heinz has made a major investment in the project, although the company has not revealed any details. It is hoping to take a step further toward its own goal of reducing emissions, waste, and energy consumption by 20% by 2015.
Heinz had already used 120 million PlantBottlesTM in the USA in 2011. The material in these new containers shares many properties with that of the original plastic (PET): it is amenable to carbonation of the liquid contained; recyclable; weighs the same; has the same lifetime; shares the same appearance and chemical composition; and is suitable for water, juice and carbonated beverages.
The bottle is 100% recyclable: the resulting byproducts can be reused to manufacture more bottles or to make other products, such as furniture or clothing. More opportunities for collaboration and co-creation. For example, The Coca-Cola Company and furniture maker Emeco have established a smart collaboration to manufacture the Emeco 111 Navy Chair, a chair made of 111 recycled bottles.
Where there is a need and a will for partner collaboration, companies will find a way.
Suppliers
Is growing the pie via supplier collaboration an impossible task? No, quite the opposite. But you have to collaborate more upfront on strategies. And finding an equally willing partner.
Consider one example. Over the last five years, Jimmy Dean’s has expanded its frame of reference beyond just breakfast sausage into convenient breakfast meals that provide longer-lasting energy. A great collaboration with its food manufacturer.
This niche partnership delivers a breakfast like what you’d get at a fast-food restaurant with sausage at its center. In that time, Jimmy Dean’s tripled its frozen breakfast sales with triple-digit millions in growth. But the business category overall grew from $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion, with Jimmy Dean’s driving nearly two-thirds of all the growth.
It’s a great example of what can happen when companies and their supplier bases stop fighting over splitting the pie and instead find a way to increase the share. In this case, the growth was stealing sales that might otherwise have gone to fast-food establishments.
We offer these additional collaboration or co-creation recommendations that are independent of the partner type you are collaborating with (from the Art of Innovation by Tom Kelly):
Shoot the bad ideas first
Study the things you know won’t work. They will help you understand why they don’t work and give you more alternative options.
Have a bias for action
Move to implement experimentation with your best ideas as soon as possible. The mere process of actualizing will create more ideas and thoughts on solutions.
Try as many types of media as possible to explore your prototype options. Examples include drawings, graphics, foam … any means to learn quickly.
Iterate often
Create short feedback loops. Don’t go long without experimenting and testing your ideas.
Expect your design to change
Rarely does your first prototype become your final design?
Remember this, if you are as impatient as I am, look to your colleagues, your friends, your customers, other businesses, and to suppliers to challenge you to reach new heights. Tap into the parts of your brain you may not use every day. The parts of your brain you may not even realize you can tap into.
Most of all, reach out to others to collaborate. The sum of group collaboration is always greater than the work of each individual.
Do you have any comments, questions, or experiences on collaboration to share with this community?
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with collaboration efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?
Do you have a lesson about making your creativity better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
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All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
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Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
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