From Wikipedia:

Co-creation is the practice of product or service development that is collaboratively executed by developers and stakeholders together.

Your customers know what they want – or at least what they don’t want.  They have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t and what types of features they’d like to see in a particular product.  Usually companies base their product offerings on research conducted on focus groups or small groups of customers.  But the power of the Internet allows companies to communicate with a much larger percentage of their customers (at least for most products).

Co-creation is the process of tapping into the knowledge your customers have to create products they are actually willing to buy.  This process does not necessarily have to be online, although online does provide some great opportunities for 2-way communication.  The important part of co-creation is actually using this feedback to improve and create your products, which may take a few organizational changes.  Companies who successfully implement co-creation practices have internal processes for having 2-way conversations with their customers and using that information to improve their customer experiences. Using co-creation, you can more closely meet your customers’ expectations for your products while improving both ROI and customer satisfaction.

(photo by leans @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: co-creation, design, product management, business, product marketing, product development, customer service, marketing, customer-centric

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