Experience co-creation (ECC) is a major re-think on how businesses create value. It involves redefining the way organizations engage individuals in value creation, especially employees and internal stakeholders, but also customers, suppliers, and related external stakeholders and communities. It is about organizations unleashing the creative energy of people by inviting and enabling them to interact with them differently.More
The Experience Co-Creation Partnership provides workshops, executive education and consulting services to disseminate experience co-creation concepts and support their practitioners. We are committed to the global application of ECC practice and travel extensively all over the world. Typical engagements with companies start with an introductory workshop and evolve into a combination of cascading workshops, coaching and consulting interventions. Our primary role is to coach members of the organization in the application of the experience co-creation concepts and help companies migrate to the next practices of value creation. More
I became interested in economic affairs by listening to my father’s speculation about where commercial trucks driving up our street in Eastern France came from. As a German teacher in the local public high school, his own finances were protected from any competitiveness consideration, yet he instinctively understood the power of business in creating local wealth for the community. He also taught at a local textile institute and learned through conversations with his students how tough it was for local plants to compete against rising Asian factories. Although the value system at our household was mostly academic – you were either a “good student” or you were not – he marveled at how a few of his “average” students had become local entrepreneurs and created jobs around our home town. He often quoted the example of a local industrial baker who, while not an A student in his German class, had grown to hire hundreds of local people, eventually providing a strong career to one of his sons-in-law. “My job is to help my students export by teaching them German”, he would say. This was the first public-private partnership of my young economic life.
When I hear how confused we have become about what makes an economy tick, I revert back to my belief in “it’s the local economy, stupid”. By now, we’ve all learned that jobs are created by small businesses, who are by definition local. Economic wealth is generated when a few entrepreneurs find local financing to hire qualified local workers trained at local schools, thereby generating income that can be spent in local shops and invested in local houses, thereby allowing local politicians to be popular and get reelected. The process of co-creation through which these people work with each other – the entrepreneurs, the employees, the bankers, the customers, the service providers, the politicians – is a lot more important than the economic policy set by a central government anywhere. Sadly, this is not how economists think, as they arrogantly keep searching for the next policy paradigm. More
Increasingly, my work starts in a barren, Mad Max-like world of deadened emotions. Why do cops not feel the pain of a woman who’s reporting to them she’s been raped? Why does a bank advisor keep pushing credit cards on a customer already stressed by too much debt? Why does a car salesman use hard-selling tactics when buyers tell them at every opportunity they hate the car buying experience? Why does the head of R&D at a chip-designing firm not care about the rising suicide rate of its engineers pressured by competitive deadlines? Don’t they feel the pain they inflict onto others? Aren’t they made of flesh and blood like the people they inflict this pain onto?
Unavoidably, an exploration of these deeply emotional issues reveals a hyper-rationalization of everybody’s behavior through process. “The process made me do it” is the most common answer. Nested inside the process are the productivity and cost metrics associated with it. Let us look at the neighborhood cop and victim, for example. The neighborhood cop operates within the constraints of a quickly shrinking police budget in most cities of the world, and therefore has to move quickly from victim to victim, making sure that the paperwork will hold in court if the incident results in a court procedure. This becomes the legitimization for the cop’s heartless behavior (“it is in your best interest that we fill in this paperwork right so that your aggressor can be condemned in due time”), which, while true, is not exactly what a rape victim would like to hear immediately after the emotionally shattering episode. When the local police force initiates any kind of lean, quality or reengineering effort in this area, it is likely to be framed as: “how do we make the incident reporting effort more efficient?” More
Sometimes, one is overtaken by events. This is what happened to me, producing this long embarrassed silence on my part. Many of you have asked me: did you go and talk to the branch manager at Bank of America (see previous blog entry). The answer is: I did. So what came out of that, you may ask? The answer is: great puzzlement on my part, hence this embarrassed silence for close to a month.
Let me explain. The meeting was confusing to me. The Concord, MA branch manager is a nice lady, but she never understood what I wanted from her. In the first twenty minutes of our conversation, she thought I was a customer who was mad at her for not having been in touch. She thought I was there to complain about poor service and about the fact that nobody had reached out to me in spite of the fact that I had both a personal and a business account at her branch. Yes, there was a bit of truth to that, but this wasn’t my focus. I meant to convey I’m a business activist who wanted her to make more money for the branch by connecting more deeply with the Concord community, and I wanted to offer to help her build that community of people. Blank stares and nervous hands told me she had no idea what I was talking about (admittedly my story could have been better articulated!).
The next twenty minutes, she decided I wanted some money for my favorite cause. She talked about some of the things the bank already does, explained to me they can only support a limited number of local charities. Her quizzical look showed she wanted me to blurt out what my pet nonprofit was, so that she could explain why it fitted or did not fit with the program. Since I was interested in defining a broader community agenda with her, I had no specific request for her, except to engage a broad community of people who would construct that community agenda with her and her staff. I could see she was getting increasingly nervous. More
While preserving the appearance of modern journalism’s objectivity, the article describes him as a largely incompetent leader who got the CEO job because he was one of the few who actually wanted it, somehow surviving because B of A is protected from its own ineptitude by being too big to fail.
I actually like Bank of America and its CEO, and I’ve decided to help them. I do not know my man Bryan or anybody senior at B of A, nor do I have any special relationship with the bank. I’m a regular customer of the local branch (I have a small business and a personal account with them), and I like the idea that they still have a physical building right across the street from my office in Concord, Massachusetts, even though I hardly ever set foot in it. I’m also tired of seeing America bash itself, starting with its President and everybody down the line. The President of the United States has appeared uninterested in grass roots community support outside election periods, so I might as well start with a large bank CEO whom I imagine to be a friendly Irish type from New England . I’ll let you know otherwise if I ever meet him. More
There’s something inherently risky about living in Red Sox nation and extolling the talent of a former Yankee manager, but I really like Joe Torre. I know, I know. Bear with me here.
What I like about the guy is his practical, self-effacing way of engaging super-egos in the construction of a common ecosystem called baseball. A recent Sports Illustrated article explains how in his latest endeavor, he’s trying to get baseball umpires and players to work together. While everybody is focused on generating new rules ideas, tightening old ones, ruthlessly evaluating umpires and mercilessly punishing players, he believes umpires and players should just get to know each other better. He points to the fact that when the American and National Leagues both had their own umpires, players and umpires were able to know each other and got along better. He’s working on finding a place in training camp where they can sit together. In other words, it’s not about setting end-policies and defining hard paths to those policies. It is about the process of engaging with each other in new ways. More
I am back from a week of vacation in London. Do I know how to pick a vacation spot or what?
From my room in a posh Mayfair hotel, I started wondering how the civilized society of the UK could suddenly produce those horrendous riots. While professional criminals clearly participated, the transformation of previously law-abiding citizens into one-time looters and arsonists is most intriguing. Why would a 32 year old assistant teacher coaching high-school youths become an accidental looter? Why would a recently graduated 22 year old student living a nice suburban life with her parents steal an HD television when she already has one at home, only to be consumed by remorse and turn herself in a few days later? What went on in the minds of those ordinary, law-abiding citizens and made them into wolves for one night?
One way to look at the problem is to view it as an epidemic, like tuberculosis, cholera or AIDS. Gary Sulkin, a well-known epidemiologist, urges UK authorities to look at it in this fashion in a recent article in the Guardian. His view is that containing or stopping the infection requires interrupting the person-to-person spreading of it. A cognitive psychologist named Aaron Beck refers to the phenomenon as “groupness” and describes it as a collective, communal, group-think-motivated violence. Having been confronted with violent hazing in my youth, I have wondered all my life why some of the individuals who later became my friends (well, sort of) did not do anything to stop it at the time. What would it have taken for one of them, then another, to say: “I shall not do this.” Having lain awake many nights pondering this issue, I am not sure hoping to tackle the issue at the individual level yields any answer. Sometimes, only a group can counteract the destructive actions of another group. More
"Co-Creation Stories" is a three-part video series showing Francis Gouillart presenting the principles and case studies on co-creation.
The Power of Co-Creation by Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouillart (Simon & Schuster Free Press, October 2010)
This major business book presents co-creation as the new re-engineering. The book provides a framework for managers and case studies on how leading businesses are using co-creation platforms to supercharge marketing, sales, R&D, product development and management. Management guru Tom Peters said about the book (via Twitter): "'BREATHTAKING' ALERT: I guarantee 'The Power of Co-Creation' will be talked about for years to come! INCREDIBLE (quantity/quality) EXAMPLES."
This companion article to The Power of Co-Creation demonstrates how co-creation puts the human experience at the center of the enterprise's design. The authors highlight important implications for strategy formulation, business process redesign, and value creation.
Download a free copy courtesy of our strategic partner, PRTM management consultants (registration required).
C-Star Co-Creation Conference, September 16-17, Beijing – Francis Gouillart will give a keynote speech and lead several workshops
12th International Management Congress, July 5, Porto Alegre, Brazil – Francis Gouillart gave a keynote speech titled "Co-creating sustainable relationships with stakeholders"
HSM World Business Forum 2011, June 27-28, Buenos Aires – Francis Gouillart gave a keynote speech on co-creation at this leading business conference in Argentina
PDMA Conference on Social Product Development and Co-Creation, June 27-28, Phoenix – Prof. Venkat Ramaswamy, co-author of The Power of Co-Creation, was a keynote speaker at this conference chaired by our strategic partner, PRTM management consultants
Enterprise Co-Creation Executive Breakfast, June 10, Copenhagen – Francis Gouillart and our strategic partner, PRTM management consultants, presented the principles of co-creation in action
Enterprise Co-Creation Executive Breakfast, June 7, Paris –Francis Gouillart and clients from La Poste and Credit Agricole spoke on "business innovation and transformation through co-creation"
Japanese Book Launch Event, May 27, Tokyo – PRTM management consultants, our strategic partner, hosted the launch event for this fifth edition of The Power of Co-Creation, published by Tokuma Shoten
Management Circle Strategic Dialogue 2011, May 19, Frankfurt– Francis Gouillart and Prof. Robert S. Kaplan spoke on "new approaches to strategy formulation and implementation"
Front End of Innovation 2011, May 16-18, Boston – Francis Gouillart gave a keynote speech and led a special conference segment on Experience-Driven Innovation
Local Motors is one of our favorite companies because of its totally co-created business model – from design to operations to production of cars. It's an approach that could literally redefine manufacturing. So it was great to spend a day at the Local Motors micro-factory in Phoenix for the PDMA Conference on Social Product Development and Co-Creation on June 27 and 28.
One of the most interesting talks at #CoCreatePDMA was by Ben Kaufman, CEO/founder of Quirky, another company modeled on co-creation. In his short presentation, we learned a lot about the importance of good ideas, the principle of transparency, and the power of passion. Quirky serves as midwife to inventors, bringing two new consumer products to market each week. One of the latest is the Pivot Power stripthat fits large adapters in every outlet. We were pleased to bring home Kaufman's demo model from Phoenix. It's a really cool why-didn't-someone-think-of-that-before product (below).
Co-Creation Trends Report
Power to the Patient: Seven Co-Creation Trends in Healthcare
Healthcare reform is always in the news, and never more so today. In fact, many websites have appeared in recent years that make healthcare information more transparent, create dialogue between practitioners and patients (and even among patients), improve access, and reduce the risk of a bad transaction. Collectively, these websites shift both control of and responsibility for healthcare from the experts to the consumer.
This co-creation report details seven trends that tip power toward the patient.
