“What are all these people talking about?” This was my main take away from day two of the summit in August. I have written it in capital letters on a double side of the little notebook, which was handed out at the conference. It shows my initial wonderment at this so-called new path for the method of user-driven innovation and this wonderment is the also the basis for my master’s thesis from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen.

So what is this thing we call Co’Creation? I will try to explore this new business phenomenon because I’ve found there are certain important aspects in need of a good looking at. The following will be a quite critical stance on Co’Creation. It is not to say that I cannot see any potential for new value based profit generation – I am simply trying to point out some obstacles for this our new joint venture. Hopefully this will push the discussions and development in a fruitful direction.

I have distinguished between the levels of analysis here: the discursive level (equivalent to “what people say it is”) and the practical level (how it’s actually done). Based on anthropological qualitative research in a Copenhagen-based design company and with a Dutch artist heavily engrossed in similar creative processes, I have found the following to be true:

- Co’Creation is not necessarily something new
- Co’Creation is something inherently impossible
- Other groups (such as artists) have been using the method for at a long time
- The relation between form and content; process and result is integral to the understanding and implementation of new business models such as Co’Creation (more…)

“Sticks’n'Sushi is able to optimise processes of development using co-creation, but this makes demands on the organisa- tion: we have to bring the right resources into play at the right time, which means involving more employees, cutting across the traditional organisational diagram,” concluded Kim Rahbek, the Director of Sticks’n'Sushi, after the company management had taken part in a Copenhagen Co’creation workshop.

Co-creation has been identified as one of the business strategies of the future, improving effectiveness and knowledge sharing and thus cutting down on the use of resources and consumption in general. During Copenhagen Coʼcreation: Designing for Change 09, more than 250 Danish and foreign companies, designers and experts in innovation concluded that there is a huge potential in using co-creation as a business strategy for innovation. As a pilot project, Copenhagen Coʼcreation invited management teams from Sticks’n'Sushi, ME-FA and KPMG to work for a day on how each company could use co-creation to translate knowledge and skills into new products and solutions and improved work processes. One of the aims of Copenhagen Coʼcreation is to spread the knowledge about co-creation gained during the international meeting in August 2009 to Danish companies.

Sticks’n'Sushi took part in a one-day workshop on 3 December 2009 – and when we asked Kim Rahbek afterwards what his company gained from working with co-creation, he stressed that he sees great potential in it in terms of processes of development within Sticks’n'Sushi.

On 3 December 2009, SticksʼnʼSushi took part in a Copenhagen Coʼcreation Workshop. Kim Rahbek, SticksʼnʼSushi (left) with Mikael Hallstrup and Niels Clausen-Stuck, Designit, who ran the workshop.

/ read full case

The collaboration between IIT Mumbai and IIT Chicago featured Chicago students directing research in Powai, and IIT Mumbai students directing research in Chicago. As a result, research approaches were tailored to each group of students’ needs. IIT Mumbai students focused on physical product design solutions and IIT Chicago focused on designing systems and strategies encompassing combinations of product, communication and service design opportunities. The goal of all of the projects was to contribute to increasing prosperity and small business growth within Chicago and the Powai neighborhood.

Key insights and design ideas derived from the collaboration

Exploring the possibility of for-profit and not-for-profit hybrids

Students explored the creation of for-profit/not-for-profit hybrid organizations by designing systems that:

• Strengthen communities by connecting local resources
  A self-sustaining business model for a Balwadi that integrates a non-for-profit community service provider, a for-profit entity and an educational incubator around the core values of creating social and economic value for the Powai slum community.
  (Gauri Verma, Valerie Campbell, Edwin Steinmetz , Vishwesh Kelkar)

• Empowering Self-employed Women in Powai through Social Networking
  A Kitty-Cooperative model for women’s groups in the Powai slum designed make NGOs more effective in addressing the needs of their constituents in the areas of health, education and financial independence.
  (Bhumi Gajjar, Soham Patel, Anshul Maheshwari)

Utilization of Ubiquitous or Predominant Technologies

Record-keeping and Credit Management Systems for Kirana Stores in Powai. New paper ledgers and record-keeping applications for mobile phones address preponderance of credit-based transactions, unclear payback details, and shop owner’s monopoly of the main register in stores. (Antonio Quinones, Nai-Hwa Chiang, Preethi Lakshminarayanan, Swapnil Jadhav)

Exploring New Types of Currency

Efficient Scrap Collection Systems for Powai Slums A scrap collection system that offers increased efficiency and profitability to Powai scrap collectors by facilitating networking, scrap processing, price transparency and the introduction of incentives. (Vasile Bora, Dan Folwaczny, Kyungsun Kim, Shilpa Rao, Amy Sprague)

The full paper was presented on April 7, 2009 at SDSE 2008, Bangkok Thailand.

20091123_092213_Sustainability_and_a_Global_Design_Process.pdf

The Danish company, Novozymes, known for its bio-innovations, used co-creation as a method to redesign its traditional campaign strategy. One-way communication was replaced by communication based on dialogue. Using co-creation, the company has created a virtual community, in which more than 10,000 people all over the world are involved in creating the campaign and keeping it alive.

Consumer behaviour
A company like Novozymes that produces enzymes for use in industrial processes (primarily detergents) has to be very well informed about human behaviour. So well informed, in fact, that they are totally familiar with our eating habits and how we wash our clothes. For example, a connection has been made between the new ‘light’ products that grace our dining tables and new kinds of stains that appear on our clothes.

”What it’s all about is that Novozymes have developed enzymes to wash clothes clean even at 30 degrees Celsius. And when we lower the temperature on the washing machine we save energy and CO2– without having to alter our habits. This is one of the easy choices people can make in their daily lives, and at the same time have a positive influence on the environment. These days we cooperate on innovation with those of our customers who produce detergents and who possess a wide knowledge of the needs and wishes of consumers. In the future, when sustainability will be a decisive factor in terms of innovation and finding new solutions, we shall have to understand to an even greater extent at what point along the value chain it is important to make a special effort to make our daily lives more sustainable, and to understand how we can contribute to this. This is why we have adopted an approach to innovation based on the value chain,” explains Mette Johnsen. (more…)

Copenhagen Co’creation has asked Silje Kamille Friis three questions about designers working with co-creation today.

The core of co-creation is innovation and the ability to cooperate across specialist areas. What challenges do you think face designers in terms of cooperation with customers?


Traditionally, most designers have been working to provide results for customers within a particular field of design: graphic design, multi-media design, product design, and so on. The designer is the expert responsible for developing the project and carrying it through. Within the past twenty years we have witnessed an increased reliance on user-driven methods, which provide input to the development process and hopefully improve the quality of the final product, but the designer is still the expert responsible for developing and carrying out the project. Students today learn these methods at most schools of design, and many design bureaux employ anthropologists and sociologists to carry out various surveys and such. But when we start talking about ‘cooperation’ we are indicating the need for a new range of skills. We are asking design bureaux to facilitate externally types of processes which they perhaps have not yet applied internally. This calls for a new kind of explicit knowledge about design processes and methods and an insight into psychological, educational and organisational mechanisms, for example. How to lead and manage cooperation between various areas of expertise? How to design processes? Who is responsible for the end results when untrained staff is at work in the kitchen? GK VanPatter of Humantific in New York uses the metaphor of a baker’s shop: in traditional terms, the designer has been the baker delivering good bread. The customer buys the product and hopefully goes home satisfied. End of story. But what if the customer wants to help develop the dough and bake the bread? That’s a completely new situation. Translated to the world of the design bureaux this means that the business has moved from R+D and production to Training & Development.
 (more…)

How are we doing in the Danish industries? Do we release the full potential of co-creation today? No, I don’t think so, but I do believe that we are well on track. Our democratic heritage makes it easier for us to break down borders and co-create across public and private sectors and across silos and industries. When talking about Denmark’s competitive advantage, we have the potential to be frontrunners in exploring and benefitting from co-creation. But we have to keep focus and move fast.

(Lisbet Thyge Frandsen was asked to give her take on the question ‘what is the state of the art for the Danish industries working with co-creation and innovation?’ Read the case ‘Grundfos invests in talent’ here)

About Lisbet Thyge Frandsen

I see co-creation as a potential for future growth. Co-creation is an energising process where knowledge disseminates and ideas flow freely. Everybody acknowledges that knowledge sharing is imperative for effective and efficient innovation, but noboby has so far found the holy grail, even though lots and lots of money have been spent over decades on sophisticated databases and it-systems that didn’t work. Why is that? Because knowledge sharing is a human process requiring a purpose for sharing. Co-creation has always a purpose – you are in it together to solve an important task. The process produces engagement, enthusiasm, passion and by the end of the day – drive leading to innovative solutions.

(Lisbet Thyge Frandsen was asked to give her take on the question ‘how do you see co-creation as a potential for future growth?’ Read the case ‘Grundfos invests in talent’ here)

About Lisbet Thyge Frandsen

The Danish company, Grundfos, a giant in the field of pumps, has re-thought its approach to developing talent and creating results through co-creation.

A global talent machine
A practical example of how Grundfos uses co-creation is their new talent programme.
”One of the major challenges that we constantly face at Grundfos is how to train and develop a staff of over 18,000 people in more than 50 countries. We have come a long way with training the broad mass of our employees, but on top of that we now also need to be world class at developing the very best of them, those with real talent. We badly need the best people because we have designed a very ambitious strategy with a vision that aims to develop radically innovative products and solutions”, explains Lisbet Thyge Frandsen.

To meet the challenge of designing a concept for developing talent that can be used all over the world, Grundfos has chosen to develop the concept as a co-creation project.

”We had to act quickly and it had to work all over the world. And because it will affect a very large number of people, I felt it important to develop a concept that that they all could relate to. So, to ensure that the concept had local roots and was culturally broad in scope, we gathered a group of 40 managers and specialists from 23 countries who were all passionately interested in the task and prominent in terms of forming public opinion in their local environment. This was a very diverse group and they were given four days to design a new concept for talent development”, adds Lisbet Thyge Frandsen. (more…)

An interview with christian bason by Ida Vesterdal, partner at VIA Design

In August this year, 35 international experts in co-creation and design thinking gathered in Copenhagen to form the international Copenhagen Co’creation Network. The aim of this network is to harvest the experience already gained through the application of co-creation and to disseminate knowledge of co-creation as a tool to tackle the social, cultural and economic challenges we face today.

The public sector in the western world was very much in focus, especially the question of increasing pressures to make social innovation a priority and the related question of: What must be done to equip the public sector to react positively to this pressure and come up with viable solutions?

When asked to identify the greatest challenge facing the public sector today, apart from climate changes, employment and new technologies, Christian Bason selects one central challenge, which concerns the system and its users:

“The public sector is facing staff shortages in the coming years. Every second manager in the public sector and one quarter of all public employees will be retiring in the next 7-8 years.”

“At the same time, the public is demanding more and more of its public services. People expect coordinated and meaningful services that can effectively help them to meet their own personal challenges.” (more…)

Acknowledge that different levels of creativity exist and offer relevant online experiences to facilitate people’s expressions of creativity at all levels. This means leading, guiding, and providing scaffolds as well as clean slates to encourage people at all levels of creativity. But this is a tall order. For starters, you may want to identify your “makers” and design scaffolds to support their creative expression. If you do this right, the makers may even want to help you guide the “adaptors” and lead the “doers”.

Recognize or reward people for their co-creative efforts, but keep in mind that intrinsic motivation beats extrinsic motivation.

Don’t try to design experiences for people. You can’t. Do provide scaffolds for them to use in creating their own experiences. (more…)