September 26, 2024
Co-creation: A mindset towards innovation
Co-creation is mindset and a collaborative approach thriving on empathy, diversity, creativity and consensus: 1+1 greater than two. Together we are stronger!
„I think what really stands out with smaller breweries and especially in this newer craft beer segment.., and not just in Germany but worldwide, is the theme of "Together we are stronger!” …That means it is incredibly open. We actually brew together, so there are so-called collaboration brews where you get together, brew a beer together, exchange ideas, be it brewing processes or tips and tricks, and then market a beer together… yes, one plus one makes more…We don't want to be the only craft brewery on the shelf, as this segment thrives on diversity.“
Katharina Kurz, co-founder and directrice of BRLO, Interview September 2024 (translated)
BRLO, founded in 2014, is a Berlin based brewery and gastronomy company that stands for modern beer diversity and distinctive experiences.
Watch interview bites with Katharina
What is Co-creation?
Co-creation is a mindset and collaborative process towards innovation thriving on empathy, diversity, creativity and consensus. Multiple stakeholders, i.e. users, partners, suppliers, employees, experts, decision-makers and/or communities, are working together to understand and clearly define challenges and create mutually valuable and valued outcome (ideally= positive impact), ranging from products, processes to services in various sectors. It teams diverse perspectives and expertise to innovate and solve complex challenges, often within an ecosystem.
An ecosystem is a network of intertwined organizations and/or individuals working towards shared goals.
Main Co-creation objectives?
Innovation and positive impact creation: Developing effective solutions for clearly defined challenges by harnessing diverse perspectives and different expertise.
Stakeholder engagement: Involving stakeholders in the creation process to boost engagement and innovation and to create a mutually valued outcome for all.
Enhanced collaboration: Promoting a collaborative culture across sectors for sustainable, effective and mutually valued outcomes for all.
Agility and responsiveness: Enabling more flexible and rapid responses/ ad-aptations to changes and real needs.
Incoporated in a long term, positive impact oriented strategy, all objectives are supporting pivotal shifts in business, finance, environment and societal dynamics to create positive impact!
Co-creation initiatives - Example
LEGO Ideas Platform
Many companies have successfully co-created with their customers and partners, leading to new products.
E.g.:
Lego is based in Denmark. Through LEGO’s co-creation platform, fans can submit and vote on new product ideas. By 2023, over 40 sets have been produced from fan submissions: e.g. the "Saturn V Rocket" set has sold > 1 mio units worldwide.
LEGO Group. (2023). LEGO Ideas.
Co-creation initiatives - Example
European Horizon Program 2020
Horizon Europe is the EU's key funding programme for research and innovation. It tackles climate change, helps to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and boosts the EU's competitiveness and growth.
It has facilitated over 30,000 collaborative projects involving co-creation across 150 countries. By 2024, it had invested over €80 billion in research and innovation, with many projects focusing on sustainable development and digital transformation.
European Commission. (2024). Horizon 2020 Final Report. European Commission Research & Innovation.
BUT
Why does it matter?
Which hidden barriers and underlying dynamics are impeding co-creation?
What can we do to overcome them?
Why does it matter?
Co-creation holds great promise for driving innovation and positive impact by leveraging collective intelligence, building strong relationships and trust and finally creating mutual valued outcomes in ways that traditional approaches may not. It can revolutionize how organizations innovate and engage with stakeholders: building resilient and dynamic ecosystems. And it helps organizations stay responsive and impactful in a rapidly changing world.
But its success depends on overcoming resistance, structural and operational barriers, IP concerns, just to name a few. With an open mindset and tangible , well-coordinated initiatives, co-creation can be a powerful approach for unlocking the full potential of collaborative innovation with meaningful impact.
Collaborative approach for positive impact creation
„The biggest lever, from our point of view, is to take a truly regenerative approach and try to create a really positive effect through the materials we use and the partnerships we form. There are various projects along our value chain that we have initiated, various partnerships that have emerged, which are actually based on the principle of not just going there to say where we can minimize damage, but where we can actually have a positive effect through what we do… An ecosystem thrives on diversity and more on distributing it to different places. That means we don't go there and say we're growing, so we'll exert more power, for example, we play suppliers off against each other or start exerting pressure. Instead, we keep trying to build up an entire network with several small, independent suppliers. And not just to benefit from that alone, but to bring others in too; there is also a collaborative idea behind it.“
Anna Yona, Co-founder and directrice of Wildling Shoes, Interview August 2024 (translated)
In 2015, Anna Yona co-founded the company Wildling Shoes producing handcrafted minimal shoes made from ecological natural materials and in compliance with fair working conditions
Co-creation positive impact
Boosts innovation
- Bringing together different people with different perspectives and skills leads to an increase in number and quality of new ideas that wouldn’t happen alone.
- Getting input from ‚users‘ ensures the solution is inclusive and effective, meeting their real needs.
- Co-creation sets clear expectations and roles
Embraces stakeholder engagement
Products, processes and services tailored by stakeholder input are more likely to bring mutually valued outcome for all.
Speeds up development
- Feedback from users and other stakeholders accelerates the process of understanding and supports fixing emerging issues quickly and early —> speeding up the development process.
- Risk mitigation by testing ideas with users and other stakeholders first, helps to avoid major issues later.
Strengthens partnerships
- Co-creation builds stronger networks by sharing ideas and resources —> team work
- Potential cooperation links -hidden before - are unveiled
- Everyone involved gets to benefit from the process, creating a multi-win situation —> mutual benefit
Increases agility
- Organizations can quickly respond to changes and new trends
- And identifying challenges early
Fosters Diversity Equity Inclusion
- Giving a voice to diverse groups leads to more fair and effective solutions.
- Solutions are often better for the environment and society.
Hidden barriers and underlying dynamics impeding the process
„I would say, e.g. enterprises in the new economy are opening up much more easily to agile ways of working, where the topic of leadership also looks different….. We know that leadership, I now consciously call it leadership work, can no longer just rest on a few shoulders, but must become more distributed. That decisions are made where they actually technically belong….“
Andrea Hohlweck, OrganisationsberatungI Coaching, Interview September 2024 (translated)
Powerdynamics/cultural resistance
Co-creation follows a bottom up logic, building high-quality relationships between diverse stakeholders is decisive. They are complex in nature but crucial for fostering creativity and collaboration.
However, many organizations struggle with resistance to co-creational approaches, preferring traditional hierarchical arrangements: A 2023 McKinsey survey found that 72% of transformation efforts involving co-creation failed due to internal resistance.
McKinsey & Company (2023). Overcoming Organizational Resistance to Transformation.
Intellectual Property concerns
Sharing ideas and information in co-creation can raise issues around IP ownership, leading to reluctance in fully engaging: A 2023 Deloitte report revealed that 54% of companies cited IP concerns as a major barrier to collaboration, limiting the willingness to engage in co-creation.
Deloitte (2023). IP 360° survey
Coordination challenges
Managing key stakeholders and aligning their objectives can be complex and resource-intensive. If co-creation is not properly applied, i.e. suffers from poor coordination among stakeholder paired with resistance and established power dynamics, expected outcome is poor.
Plos Global Public Health Blog (2024). Breaking the Mold: Rethinking Global Health Through a Co-Creation Lens
Unequal participation
Engaging in co-creation challenges established roles and power dynamics. Participants often face the challenge of grappling with detrimental power dynamics and conflicting motivations and objectives among stakeholders.
That leads to unequal contributions and outcomes, undermining the collaborative spirit. Research from 2023 indicated that a significant number of co-creation initiatives were dominated by a few stakeholders, which impede the process and reduce overal mutually valued outcome.
Co-creation: A trustworthy methodology ?
There is a need for in-depth knowledge sharing on how co-creation is implemented in practice and what successful and unsuccessful co-creation endeavours look like.
Hidden barriers and underlying dynamics are powerful so what can we do to overcome them?
‚I see a great openness among many, a great interest in working together, much less ‚we do it alone behind closed doors‘. What is actually needed is a bit of ‚breathing space‘ and resources to then use these synergies. And I believe that a different political framework could free up these energies again.‘
Anna Yona, Co-founder and directrice of Wildling Shoes, Interview August 2024 (translated)
Paradigm shifts: From ego to eco
Engaging in co-creation challenges well-established power dynamics, roles and responsibilities. A willingness to embrace uncertainties and an acceptance for ‘we don’t have all answers ourselves’ are prerequisites.
"Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our operating system from an obsolate ego-system focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole.”
Otto Scharmer (2022). Club of Rome. Earth for all. Deep dive Paper 11: Transforming our economies from ego to eco
Inclusive practices
Ensuring that all voices are heard and valued through inclusive practices helps balance power dynamics in the co-creation process. Properly done they aime for true collaboration throughout the entire process. Prerequite is a ‘from ego to eco’ attitude.
E.g.
- Advancing co-creation in most pressing Global Health issues might present tangible practices of cross-sector interest for steering serious co-creation initiatives.
IP governance
Developing transparent rules and agreements around IP and further contributions can mitigate concerns
E.g.
- The European Union's Horizon Europe program, succeeding Horizon 2020, includes stringent guidelines for IP management in collaborative projects. By 2024, it had funded over 5,000 projects with clear IP sharing rules, aiming for fair and equitable collaborations.
Enhanced methodolgy and tools
To advance in methodology and tools there is a need for more in-depth knowledge sharing on how co-creation is implemented in practice and what successful and unsuccessful co-creation endeavours look like.
E.g.
- Health CASCADE, an Innovative Training Network/ European Union’s Horizon 2020 research project, focuses on collaboratively creating resources that are open access, user-friendly, and accessible to a wide audience. Resources range from decision support tools, guideline for designing and reporting co-creation, evaluation frameworks, method selection tools, and a set of enabling technologies.
Digital platforms and tools that facilitate easier and more effective collaboration across distances and time zones have been widely adopted to support real-time collaboration and are leading to an increase in productivity for organizations that adopted these tools effectively.
How to get started and keep going?
“..taking action is often better than overthinking. There are many who want everything perfectly thought through from the start and want to know or be secured against every eventuality. I believe that just won't happen in today's world. That means, I think you have to be able to live with a certain amount of uncertainty and be willing to jump into cold water and correct things along the way. And for me, I believe that's the most important thing: you can create a business plan at the start, but it will absolutely not turn out the way you expect. And that's just how it is. I think you have to accept that and quickly make adjustments. So, it goes back to being open.”
Katharina Kurz, co-founder and directrice of BRLO, Interview September 2024 (translated)