Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
1
Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities:
Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in the Networking Era
David Romero*, Arturo Molina
Tecnológico de Monterrey, Ciudad de México, México
Abstract. Strategic networks such as Collaborative Networked Organisations
(CNOs) and Virtual Customer Communities (VCCs) show a high potential as
drivers of value co-creation and co-innovation. Both look at the network
structures as a source of jointly value creation and open-innovation through
access to new skills, knowledge, markets and technologies by sharing risk and
integrating complementary competencies. This collaborative endeavour is
able to enhance the adaptability and flexibility of CNOs and VCCs value
creating systems in order to react in response to external drivers such as
collaborative (business) opportunities. Strategic business networks are active
entities continuously adapting to their environment in order to enhance their
capabilities to respond to short-term business opportunities, and therefore
allow their business ecosystems to follow the rhythm of industry dynamics,
and customers changing needs and preferences. Value co-creation is the new
trend in open-business models trying to integrate organisations‟ competencies
and involve customers‟ individual preferences into network and community
formations for the co-creation of the next level of value for products, services
and experiences to be launched into the market. This paper presents a
literature review on value co-creation and co-innovation concepts and styles,
and proposes a reference framework for creating interface networks, also
known as „experience-centric networks‟, as enablers for linking networked
organisations and customer communities in order to support the establishment
of sustainable user-driven and collaborative innovation networks.
Keywords: Collaborative Networked Organisations, Customer Communities,
Interactive Marketing, Co-Innovation, Open-Innovation, Value Co-Creation,
Value Systems, Virtual Breeding Environments, Virtual Organisations.
1. Introduction
In today‟s global economy, organisations are collaborating more and more. Thus organisations are
engaging in new forms of highly collaborative mechanisms and networked structures capable of
providing a competitive advantage by combining the best skills or core competencies and resources
of two or more organisations, as well as customer1 knowledge of a product or a service to co-create a
value proposition more compelling and relevant to the consumers‟ needs and expectations. In this sense,
collaborative networks represent a promising paradigm together with customer communities to emphasis
on core competencies, personalisation and innovation, supported by collaborative mechanisms. This
allows the consumer to stamp a product or a service with his/her own applications, preferences and
configurations, and therefore co-create value in a collaborative endeavour (Romero & Molina, 2009).
Collaborative Networked Organisations (CNOs) show a high potential as drivers of value co-creation,
allowing organisations access to new knowledge, sharing risk and resources, joining complementary
skills and capacities, which allow them to focus on their core competencies. In addition, collaborative
networks induce innovation, and thus co-create new sources of value by confrontation of ideas and
practices, combination of resources and technologies, and creation of synergies (Camarinha-Matos &
Afsarmanesh, 2006).
On the other hand, Virtual Customer Communities (VCCs) show a promising (business) value as
“online social networks” capable to leverage all aspects of a product or a service, from product design and
marketing communication to creating the overall brand experience. VCCs can support mass-customisation
strategies by allowing customers to become co-designers of their products and services (Sawhney et al,
2003; Foray, 2004; Fiore et al, 2004; Piller et al, 2005); sales and marketing initiatives through viral
marketing strategies (Anderson, 1998; Subramani & Rajagopalan, 2003); and branding strategies through
connecting customers around the lifestyles associated with their products (McWilliam, 2000; Andersen,
2005).
1 The terms “consumer” and “customer” are used interchangeably throughout this paper.
*Corresponding Author: Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Mexico City, Del Puente 222, Col. Ejidos de Huipulco,
Tlalpan, 14380, México, D.F. E-mail: [email protected] Phone +52 55-54831605 Fax +52 55-54831606
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
2
In this context, CNOs working together with VCCs can be seen as a cooperative process of value
co-creation and co-innovation/open-innovation, through which a group of entities enhance the capabilities
of each other by sharing risk, resources, responsibilities, and rewards to co-produce a unique value
proposition for each consumer and stakeholder (Romero & Molina, 2009).
2. Value Co-Creation as a Cooperative Process
A cooperative process is a formal relationship between two or more entities involving substantial time,
commitments, high levels of trust and significant access to each other‟s resources to achieve a common
purpose. Cooperation may involve moderate to extensive mutual sharing of resources and some sharing of
risk, responsibilities and rewards in order to co-create value (Himmelman, 2001).
Furthermore, co-creation can be understood as a cooperative process involving customers and
organisations interactions in all creative activities. The potential of value co-creation is achieved through
developing and exploiting these interactions with the ultimate aim of co-designing and co-producing
the next level of value for a product or a service, exceeding in this way customers‟ greatest expectations
with an entire experience around their favourite products and services.
In this matter, value co-creation can be defined as: “corporations processes for co-creating goods,
services and experiences in close cooperation with experienced and creative consumers, tapping into
their intellectual capital, and in exchange rewarding them for what actually gets co-produced,
co-manufactured, co-developed, co-designed, co-serviced, and/or co-processed” (Trendwatching, 2006).
Value co-creation has shift the traditional idea of value creation, in where customers were seen as
“destroying the value which organisations create for them”, while in alternative the new value creation
paradigm views customers “actively co-creating and re-creating value with organisations” (Ramirez,
1999). Thus, all these changes are setting the stage for an expanded role for customers, in new
co-creation environments, where customers are no longer passive recipients of goods and services;
instead customers are now active partners co-creating value with organisations. As mentioned by
Prahalad & Ramaswamy (2004), in today‟s competitive landscape, organisations as producers of goods
and services cannot exclusively create added-value for customers. Increasingly, value propositions have
to be jointly created by both corporations and consumers as co-producers. In other words, added-value
has to be co-created in successful interactions between customers and corporations - in what we may call
the co-create event - through the personalisation of a product or a service based-on customer‟s specific
needs, conditions and personal taste.
Following this new value co-creation approach, organisations are trying to re-invent their strategies
by participating in collaborative networks in order to maintain their competitive advantages through
the emergence of new value creation practices (e.g. value co-creation, co-innovation/open-innovation)
based-on a continuum of collaboration together with their customer communities.
3. Value Co-Creation Actors
Recent years have seen an unprecedented growth in a large variety of collaborative networks and customer
communities thanks to the advances in information and communication technologies (e.g. Internet,
Web 2.0, Online Social Networking), allowing consumers to enter into a worldwide e-marketplace of
options, and organisation into a global competition. Hence, organisations are increasingly starting to
operate in collaborative networked environments seeking for complementarities that allow them to offer
integral and personal experiences around their products and services for a specific customer at any
specific time, location and context. Furthermore, customers are coming together in online communities
where they are publishing and sharing (e.g. blogging, podcasting) their experiences with products and
services, and therefore evaluating the effectiveness of their producers, vendors and service providers.
Customers are comparing each other‟s experiences, giving feedback to each other, and as a result
customer communities are becoming an important influence in purchase decisions and brand loyalty.
In this scenario, collaborative networks can enable the infrastructures for handling heterogeneity of
experiences and recognising customers‟ individuality across multiple interactive channels (points-of-
interaction). The whole experience will be then co-created around personal added-value products and
services that will be co-produced by experience-centric networks integrated and supported by
collaborative networked organisations and customer communities.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
3
3.1 Collaborative Networked Organisations as Value Networks
Global competition, market dynamism, and advances in information and communication technologies
are opening and challenging new ways of creating value. As a result, the fundamental logic of value
creation based-on sequential value chains (Porter, 1985) is changing into value networks (Haglind &
Helander, 1998; Mariotti, 2002) capable of redesigning their value and therefore reshuffle their structural,
technological, financial and human assets “on-demand” in order to respond to the needs of a short-term
business opportunities (Katzy & Obozinski, 1998; Allee, 2000; Fine et al, 2002). Organisations nowadays
must continually disintegrate and reintegrate themselves in order to quickly and continually assess their
value-chain capabilities for a fast response to the rapidly evolving industry dynamics (Fine et al, 2002)
and customers‟ preferences (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000; 2004). In this sense, collaborative networked
organisations can provide the basis for agility in dynamic and turbulent market conditions (Camarinha-
Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2005; 2006).
A collaborative networked organisation, or simply collaborative network, represents “an association
of largely autonomous, geographically distributed, and heterogeneous organisations in terms of their:
operating environment, culture, social capital, and goals that have come together to collaborate in order
to better achieve common or compatibles goals, and whose interactions are supported by computer
networks” (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2005; 2006). Furthermore, a value network is defined as
“a virtual web of relationships between two or more organisations that work together to co-create
different forms of value such as goods, services, knowledge and revenue” (Allee, 2005). In this belief,
collaborative networks can be seen as value networks in where a group of organisational entities have
developed a rich web of value co-creation relationships, under a shared belief that they can achieve goals
together that would not be possible, or would have higher cost, if attempted individually (Borys &
Jemison, 1989).
Collaborative networks allow the leverage and rapid configuration of resources in order to integrate
the intellectual and technical leaderships of different organisations‟ competencies needed to establish
an effective and reconfigurable value system to build and sustain an experience-centric network.
The understanding of a value system (Romero et al, 2007a) is based on Parolini‟s notion (1999) that
“each product and service offered requires a set of value creation activities that are performed
by a number of actors forming a value creating system”. These value creation activities, with
the involvement of customers, can lead to a continuous enhancement of existing products and services or
the co-creation of new ones to meet as much as possible the needs of an individual customer who would
like to have a set of particular features in his/her products or would like to use a group services with a set
of particular characteristics.
Therefore, value creation is no longer considered as a linear function, but a collaborative and
co-evolutionary process with partners, allies, suppliers and customers that come together in close
relationships within collaborative networks that aggregate knowledge, resources and activities in
“value constellations” to co-produce value. The key strategic task in these new collaborative networked
environments is the reconfiguration of roles and relationship among the constellations of actors in order
to mobilise the creation of value in new forms and by new players. In other words, the underlying
strategic goal is to create an ever-improving fit between organisations‟ competencies and customers‟
needs (Normann & Ramirez, 1993).
3.2 Customer Communities as Value Co-Creators
Online communication technologies are enhancing the emergence of novel forms of social communities,
often referred as virtual communities, with the ability to engage customers in an on-going dialogue with
other customers and also with the firm. Thus leveraging a customer-based value creation system by
providing a way to interact, learn, conduct transactions, and share valuable knowledge with all the parties
involved in the development and usage of products and services (e.g. e-commerce).
Virtual communities are “groups of people who use communication technologies for repeated social
interaction to meet certain needs” (Preece, 2000). Furthermore, virtual customer communities are
“virtual communities composed mainly of customers who had experience in using products and/or
services” (Tzu-Ying & Jen-Fan, 2004). Most of the virtual customer community members possess
the same interests and experiences. They get together in order to chat online, exchange personal
experiences, and post news about their products and services, so they can learn from others experiences
and acquire information for buying decision-making (Tzu-Ying & Jen-Fan, 2004).
In this scenario, organisations have realised the tremendous business value and benefits (e.g. insights),
that discussion contents in virtual customer communities bring to business processes such as: product
design, marketing and branding, innovation process, etc.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
4
Next paragraphs will introduce some of the different roles that customer communities can play as
co-creators, since customer communities‟ truly revealed themselves with continuous creation of
new knowledge that serves as a new outstanding model of co-innovation/open-innovation and value
co-creation (e.g. open source innovation).
Customers as Co-Designers: Customer‟s participation in both the front-end (idea generation,
conceptualisation) and the back-end (design and testing) phases of - new - product development enhances
the innovation process and thus co-creates more value (Nambisan, 2002). In this sense, customers‟
collaboration can take two particular forms: firstly, it can support continuous - existing - product
developments by allowing those customers that seek particular outcomes in their products and services
to engage in the activities to co-produce them (Sawhner et al, 2003). Thus, customers will be able to make
adjustments and co-develop their products and services according to their personal preferences (Foray,
2004). And secondly, customers‟ participation in a collaborative innovation process by voluntarily
sharing their ideas and experiences for the co-development of the next generation of products and services
in the market (Foray, 2004). At this point of freely exchange of ideas and experiences, it is important
to remark the intellectual property rights issues that could arise. At some point of the collaboration,
customers as collaborators could start asking: “What‟s in it for me?”, so companies should payoff/reward
those customers that succeed to co-create value with the company in order to avoid having dissatisfied
customers, or worse, public battles (Von Krogh, 2006).
Therefore, companies shall engage those customers motivated by the passion for a product in
the process of new product ideation and concept development in interaction with their business allies (e.g.
suppliers) in order to add a new dynamic to the producer-customer relationship by engaging customers
directly in the co-creation of value, in other words, involving the customer at any stage of the value chain.
In summary, virtual customer communities can provide three advantages on companies that want
to enhance their relationship with their customers based-on a co-creation process: First, they give R&D
deeper insights into the customer behaviour and preferences. Second, they reduce the cost of concocting
ideas for new and improved products and services. And third, they enhance loyalty as customers become
emotionally invested in the products they help nurture (Von Krogh, 2006).
Customers as Innovators: In many companies, product development departments can not keep pace
with the need to understand and respond to customers‟ changing needs on an individual level. Therefore,
a successful solution for companies nowadays has become to stop trying to deduce customers‟ desires
(e.g. market research), since R&D has been a costly and inexact process, and instead give customers
toolkits (e.g. modelling, prototyping) to design and develop their own products and services. In this way,
companies may tighten the feedback loop between consumption and production cycles (Thomke & Von
Hippel, 2002).
The new “co-innovation/open-innovation” model is now integrating customers into active roles in
all innovation activities, from idea generation to prototyping, seeking in this way a positive impact in
the degree of innovativeness in the next generation of products and services to be launched into
the market (Nambisan, 2002; Salomo et al, 2003). In this context, users that actively seek innovation are
called “lead-users” and their orientation in innovation projects can enhance product concept effectiveness
through capitalising users‟ knowledge (Ulwick, 2002; Lilien et al, 2002; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2003;
Von Hippel, 2005; Hsieh & Chen, 2005).
As mentioned previously, customers‟ collaboration in innovation activities provide organisations with
surprising innovative capabilities. These capabilities can be maximised by the development of virtual
customer communities, which allows lead-users to freely suggest new product ideas that in most of
the cases are significantly more original and valuable than professional developers‟ ideas, since customers
know best what they want, and how, where and when they want it (Kristensson et al, 2004). Thus, online
customer communities‟ participation in product development facilitates proactive learning about
the customer, and leads to better understanding and anticipation of latent customer needs. In this
interaction the value of customer involvement arises (Matthing et al, 2004).
As a conclusion, combining internal sources of information provided by traditional R&D approaches
with lead-users knowledge, provided by their virtual communities, can guide to uncovering tacit and
latent customers‟ needs (e.g. feelings, emotions) that can drive to new products and services to satisfy
customers‟ desires that have not been previously considered (Schubert & Ginsburg, 2000).
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
5
Customers as Marketers/Branders: While word-of-mouth marketing has always been an important
factor in consumer decision-making, consumer-accessible technology (e.g. Internet, blogging, podcasting,
online social networks) is nowadays empowering more than ever the word-of-mouth delivery mechanism.
In today‟s networking era, social networking is making professionals rethink the current marketing and
advertising strategies, and therefore calling for new strategies such as alternative communication channels
(e.g. interactive Websites) and innovative marketing strategies like: “viral marketing” - e.g. online
word-of-mouth (Anderson, 1998; Wilson, 2000; Subramani & Rajagopalan, 2003), “event marketing” -
e.g. promotion of interactive conventions (Melnick & Wamm, 2004; Aiken & Campbell, 2005), “lifestyle
marketing” - e.g. fans lifestyle (Kozinets, 2001; Belk et al, 2005) and other “interactive marketing”
strategies (File et al, 1992; Quinton & Harridge-March, 2003).
Furthermore, virtual customer communities represent one of the social network forms with the power
to support interactive marketing strategies and merely create the undreamed customer loyalty. Online
customer communities offer companies a chance to get to know better their customers, through giving
them the ability to easily interact with each other and with the company itself (Armstrong & Hegel,
1997). The idea in this sense is: “give customers the opportunity to participate” (e.g. Web 2.0).
Success in this new world order requires marketers to develop a new perspective, a new skill-set,
and a new role in consumers‟ lives where “customer-generated content” and companies provide
the knowledge, tools and resources to create and manage interactive experience-sharing communities.
Whose purpose is aimed at informing customers about the quality of products, services, brands, or sellers
prior to making a purchase and after it, allowing customers to share their experiences about it. The
phenomenon of customer-generated content is helpful in the areas of spreading reputation, customer
support, discovery of users‟ hidden behaviour, understanding demands and trustable advertisement.
Therefore, managing this type of virtual customer communities is beneficial for marketing, branding and
advertisement activities (Armstrong & Hegel, 1997).
Finally, experience-sharing communities can give consumers a “greater voice”, and consequently
create positives effects in brand equity by providing an important source of information from the brand
and its products, but more particularly from other customers, and so enabling social benefits such as
promoting brand legitimacy. In short words: “the brand is the experience and the experience is the brand”
(Dayal et al, 2000; Muñiz & O‟Guinn, 2001).
Customers as Socially Responsible Actors: One topic that has gained a strong presence in the last
years is “social responsibility”. Social responsibility does not have a universally accepted definition, but it
can be understood as a concept which encourages all actors in society (e.g. organisations, governments,
citizens) to consider the interests of their local community and society at large by taking responsibility
for the impact of their activities in their surrounding districts and the environment in all aspects of their
daily-life.
Based on this philosophy, a new generation of “conscious consumers” has emerged, considering
healthy and sustainable lifestyles, and worried about the sustainable development. This trend has been
translated in major restrictions of ecological character for organisations, becoming an important factor in
customers‟ buying habits (choices) the corporate social responsible activities exercised by organisations
(Aburdene, 2005).
Examples like Greenpeace.org or other NGOs, with their corresponding world wide social
communities, most of them supported by computer networks, can be viewed as networks of conscious
consumers that represent an opportunity to involve them in the co-creation of new products and services
that meet customers‟ expectations on economic, environmental and social performance. The essence of
this dialogue is the co-creation of a shared understanding by all actors in society, mainly organisations
and customers, about their commitment to the creation of sustainable value (OECD, 2000; EC, 2002;
OE SMEs, 2002).
In the end of the day, customers‟ and organisations‟ social responsibility can be abbreviated to a set of
duties and responsibilities for planning, implementing and monitoring corporate social responsibility
programmes. As a result, customers can become real judges responsible for determining the effectiveness
of corporate social responsible activities, and in coalition with the organisations, help them with their
duties of periodic reporting “annual reports” to the society about sustainable creation of wealth (value)
for all stakeholders in the business ecosystem.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
6
4. Value Co-Creation / Co-Innovation Activities
After reviewing some of the different roles that customers can play as co-creators of value, now it is time
to approach the different principles of co-creation that companies are currently pursuing. In this trend,
one important aspect to state is the nature of the value co-created, since value can be delivered to
the customer in the form of tangible goods, with a fixed set of features and attributes, or in the form of
intangible services and experiences, with high knowledge content. In both cases, what is important to
remark is that the “locus of value co-creation” will be at the degree of personalisation of a good or
a service, along with the quality of the overall experience (interactions) in the journey to reach
the expected outcome by the customer. Therefore, considering this and other factors involved in the value
co-creation process, the OMC Group Insight (Lawer, 2006) was able to propose a kind of typology
describing eight styles of value co-creation that organisations are practising nowadays with different
levels of firm-customer interaction and customer involvement.
(1) Product “Finishing”: This mode of value co-creation represents one of the first organisational
intents to provide customers with an active role in the value creation process by allowing them to
customise a set of pre-defined features in the appearance of a product design with their own personal taste
(e.g. decoration). In this sense, consumers appear to be motivated by the idea of creating a product that
could help to generate a unique fashion style (Stanforth, 1995). The appearance (the look) of a product
comprises aspects such as colours, shapes, patterns, layouts, and typefaces. Therefore, “appearance
customisation” requires extensive capabilities in organisations, and perhaps also in consumers, for
quickly and easily customise the appearance of a group of pre-defined custom designs that can be applied
to a few products based-on customer‟s choice (Fiore et al, 2004). Furthermore, this style of value
co-creation can also include the “self-service” models that allow customers to complete the value creation
process by assembling their own a product or serving themselves in a service (Howard & Worboys, 2003).
To conclude, this approach for value co-creation offers low transaction costs (e.g. do-it-yourself),
a very tempting carrot, but in opposition it can erode customer satisfaction and loyalty because of
the weak interaction firm-customer, since there is just one single contact at the last link of the value chain:
product delivery (Alcock & Millard, 2006) (e.g. IKEA).
Table 1 Product Finishing: IKEA Example Strategy Description Actors Interaction Value Activities Producer Value Customer Value
Product
Finishing
The customer is
the last link in IKEA
value chain with an
active role finishing
the product.
PROducer +
ConSUMER
=
PROSUMER
self-service
do-it-yourself
Customer:
- Product Assembly
- Product Delivery
Producer:
- Make-to-Order
IKEA outsource some
labour to the customer
saving costs in
manufacturing, storage
and distribution.
IKEA cost savings
allow offering more
attractive prices to
the customer in
return of its labour.
(2) New Product Design and Development (Lead-Users): This style of value co-creation refers
to the incorporation of “lead-users” into product design and testing (Nambisan, 2002). Lead-users are
consumers of products or services currently experience needs still unknown to the firm, and even to
the society. Lead-users are those pushing the boundaries of current solutions available in the market,
using their inventive to adapt what they use to better fit what they need, becoming in this way a real
source of innovation motivated by the strong necessity to satisfy their needs (Von Hippel, 2005).
Therefore, organisations should work closely and continuously with their lead-users in order to keep-up
with customers changing needs and potential requirements in the near future. In this way, organisations
will have the opportunity to co-develop products and services that will provide a solution for customers‟
current and prospect needs. This mode of value co-creation can provide engineers and also sellers with
good insights about what the customers are currently demanding and will demand in the near future,
allowing the organisation to anticipate to these requirements and offer real added-value products and
services that try to achieve customer satisfaction in the short- and long-term.
Additionally to lead-users, in recent years, companies have also utilised “early-adopters”, as consumers
who embrace new products or services before most people do, and “beta-testers”, as consumers with
a commitment to test and provide ongoing enhancement to a product or a service before its release to
the market, ensuring a high quality in final version. Both groups of consumers can enhance the reputation
of a product or a service, and serve as social leaders promoting innovation by using/testing a product,
service or technology that is trying to gain momentum.
As a final point, lead-users, early-adaptors, and beta-testers receive from organisations a position
to intensively interact with the company during new product development period (design and testing) and
benefit significantly by obtaining a solution to their needs, and at the same time help organisations with
their innovation process. Both, organisations and customers can get a head on what is coming and
together co-create the next generation of products and services be release into the market (e.g.
Procter &Gamble, Silicon Graphics, Volvo XC90, Harley Davison, Saturn Cars).
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
7
Table 2 New Product Design & Development (Lead-Users): P&G‟s Connect & Develop Program Example Strategy Description Actors Interaction Value Activities Producer Value Customer Value
New Product
Design and
Development
(Lead-Users)
Lead-users and creative
minds are invited into
P&G to joint the new
product development
team to share its ideas,
needs and desires, and
also to test some new
product developments.
Engineers +
Marketers +
Lead-Users
=
Innovation
Team
Brainstorming
Focus-Groups
Open-Innovation
Platforms
Customer:
- Discover latent needs
in the market.
- Provide fresh insights
about existing products.
Producer:
- Design and develop
new products based-on
lead-user insights.
- Bring to the market
products conceived
by their potential
consumers.
P&G ideas sourcing
tool (named: connect
& develop program)
results in highly
innovative products
foreseen by lead-
users, and helps
to increase revenues
in niche or new
markets.
Lead-users ideas and
fresh insights help
P&G to innovative
faster with new
products that comply
with the customers
emerging needs.
(3) Existing Product Adaptation (Customer Feedback): This mode of value co-creation involves
bridging customer relationship best practices (e.g. Customer Relationship Management tools) with
product lifecycle strategies (e.g. Product Lifecycle Management tools) to involve customers into product
feedback process, also known as product requirements planning or prioritisation. Customer feedback
refers to an organisational commitment to continual improvement. Customer feedback also refers to
an active dialogue with consumers for listening what they want to say, and react based-on their opinions,
observations, concerns and suggestions to improve products, processes and services. Furthermore,
customers‟ feedback can be in the form of information requested to the customer (e.g. customer surveys,
customer-service reports, focus groups), but also be in the form of there unsolicited comments or
complaints, in both forms paying attention to what the consumer want to say is the key for customer
satisfaction and retention.
Listening the customer‟s voice has been always a good way to obtain ideas and insights for successful
product adaptation, but a much better way has been putting in the hands of a limited number of consumers
prototypes/products to observe and gain feedback on how the design and features of a product can be
improved. Therefore, successful organisations today are those capable to quickly adapt different versions
of their products and services according to instant consumer feedback with a real agile product adaptation
model competent to support short product release cycles based-on frequent feedback (Boztepe, 2005).
Lastly, existing product adaptation is a process of continuous value offer improvement aimed at
guarantee that customers are receiving what they really want and that organisations are performing at
the level of consumers‟ expectations (e.g. Sony Antenna Shops, Cisco Knowledge Centre, and Microsoft
Knowledge Base).
Table 3 Existing Product Adaptation: Microsoft Knowledge Base Example Strategy Description Actors Interaction Value Activities Producer Value Customer Value
Existing
Product
Adaptation
(Customer
Feedback)
Microsoft strategy to
develop new service
packs for continuously
improve its software
applications based-on
its community of users
using/testing different
programs & identifying
bugs on them, so
engineers and expert
users can solve these
problems and post their
solutions in a knowledge
base so other users can
search for solutions for
their problems.
Engineers +
Expert Users +
Normal Users
=
New
Customer
Service Team
Customer
Service
Knowledge Base
Platforms
Updates
Services
Customer:
- Post new bugs identified
in different programs.
- Search & find solutions
for software application
problems.
Producer:
- Post solutions to different
programs problems.
- Develop new service
packs as part of softwares
updates services.
Microsoft
continuously
receives feedback
from the users
to repair bugs in
its software
applications in order
to improve them.
Customers
continuously receive
from Microsoft
solutions and
updates to fix their
problems and
improve their
software
applications.
(4) Mass-Customisation: This style of value co-creation obeys to a growing market demand in
the personalisation of products and services. Mass-customisation represents ones of the organisational
attempts to provide unique value to the customer in an efficient manner, in other words, offer low-cost,
high quality and variety of value offers to satisfy customer‟s individual needs.
From consumer‟s perspective, mass-customisation refers to a customer co-design process, limited to a
set of choices or options regarding a certain features to be personalised in a standard product or service
template. From organisational perspective, mass-customisation refers to a flexible and responsive value
creation system (e.g. manufacturing system) capable of producing or offering products and/or services
tailored by the customer‟s specifications. Therefore, the challenges for organisations in this mode of value
co-creation are to embrace a closer interaction with the customer, in order to acquire information that can
be used in the production process to meet certain specific requirements; to empower customers to become
collaborators in the process of designing products or services to meet their specific needs regarding
certain product features; and to develop organisational capability to transfer customers needs and desires
into concrete product specifications (Piller et al, 2005; Zhelka, 2005).
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
8
In conclusion, mass-customisation seeks the establishment of an outgoing interaction firm-customer
to build up a lasting relationship for customers‟ deep involvement in the adequacies of products and
services features to fulfil each particular demand by offering individually customised products
and services (Fiore et al, 2004) (e.g. My Adidas, Nike iD, DELL, Car Manufacturers).
Table 4 Mass-Customisation: Nike iD Example Strategy Description Actors Interaction Value Activities Producer Value Customer Value
Mass-
Customisation
Nike offers pre-
determined options
to the customer to
customise its shoes,
letting him/her to
participate in the
design process.
Manufacture
+ Users as
Co-designers
=
Custom
Shoes
Customisation
Tools
Customer:
- Product Co-design
Producer:
- Mass Customisation
Nike facilitates a
product and the
tools that allow
those customers
willing to pay a
premium price to
design their own
shoes, increasing
Nike value offer
(utility).
Customers can
customise certain
elements of their
Nike shoes to meet
their personal taste
with regard to
buying a shoe with
a standard design.
(5) Open Community Ideation and Product Design & Development: This mode of value
co-creation refers to “creative innovation thanks to the wisdom of crowds”. Open community ideation
expression describes a collaborative and pro-active behaviour within social innovation networks
encouraging and harvesting the creativity of all its members to conceive fresh ideas for the design and
development of new products, processes and services, or the improvement of existing ones. Therefore,
customer collaboration innovation communities represent social network environments with promising
opportunities to capture a greater number of profitable ideas, through the incorporation of customers‟
thoughts (ideas) in a more quick and efficient way than using the traditional R&D approaches, into
product design and development processes. Additionally, organisations can demonstrate by following this
approach a greater commitment to serve to the specific and changing customers‟ needs by include them
into the value creation process (Piller et al, 2005).
Summarising, the openness in this type of community model represents an enabling factor for
unlocking creativity and innovation in customers and engineers, allowing them to share their wildest ideas
without restrictions, hopping that in this may any member in the community can get inspired to come up
with a set of workable ideas that can really contribute to the development of a more rich knowledge base
about needs and applications which should be translated sooner or later into concrete production
specifications to craft products, solutions, and services for the customers. An open community of ideation
is build upon users in a collaborative endeavour with organisations, and the second ones should be
responsible for capturing the largest number of contributions (ideas) from their engineers and customers
for the design and development of a high valuable offer (product, service, or both) using the power of
networks around a common interest or need. Finally, an open community of ideation represents a space
without boundaries to free customers and engineers minds for the co-creation of innovative value offers
(Piller et al, 2005) (e.g. Computer Games, Linux, LEGO Mindstorms, Firefox, and Sugar CRM).
Table 5 Open Community Ideation and Product Design & Development: LEGO Mindstroms Example Strategy Description Actors Interaction Value Activities Producer Value Customer Value
Open
Community
Ideation and
Product Design
& Development
LEGO strategy for
developing and
marketing new
interactive products
in a collaborative
process with users.
Manufacturer
& Users as
Designers
=
Lego Factory
Team
Creative
Tool-Kit
Customer:
- Products Co-design
- Products Animation
Producer:
- Tool-Kit Provider
LEGO integrates
the customer into
the innovation and
marketing processes
in order to design,
develop and sale
the best products.
Customers can
virtually design their
own products and
order the customised
set of blocks to build
them and also they
can program them
to be animated.
(6) New Service Design: This style of value co-creation is similar to the “New Product Design and
Development” approach, but with some differences regarding the value offer design implications, since
the process of new service design is distinguished from new product design for its intangible nature,
difficult standardisation, and impossibility to be stocked because service production and consumption are
inseparable (Bateson, 1977). Current practices in service design are challenging because formalisation of
service innovation process is difficult, since in general is required a knowledge pre-requisite about the
specific aspects of services design. In other words, in order to design a new service it its required to create
a short life-cycle channel to interact with the customer for feedback about a given set of service
requirements, even so the design and development of a new service is often a result of customer feedback,
but in case that feedback is requested, the typical service design process involves establishing contact
with the customer and start by setting objectives, generating ideas, and analysing them to test a service
to see if it may meet customer needs.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
9
In few words, service design process requires a concept development phase (identification and
specification of customers‟ needs and requirements) to provide detailed service information required
to design a process with the balance of service quality versus costs to deliver services that satisfy the
needs, desires, or aspirations of customers.
Last but not least, the service design process starts to present some elements of the “Personalised
Experience Value and Knowledge Co-creation” mode of value co-creation by considering that a service is
assembled from multiple interaction-points with the customer that come together to co-create a consistent
and compelling perception about the quality of a service towards real customer satisfaction (Sawhner
et al, 2003; Matthing et al, 2004) (e.g. TeliaSonera Mobile Phone Network, Alaris Medical Systems).
Table 6 New Service Design: TeliaSonera Mobile Phone Network Example Strategy Description Actors Interaction Value Activities Producer Value Customer Value
New
Service Design
TeliaSonera strategy
allows the customer
to test most of its
mobile services with
certain limitations so
the customer can get
familiar with them
and choose those
services that satisfy
its personal needs.
Service
Provider +
User as
Service
Designer &
Configurator
=
New Service
Configurations
Service
Configuration
Tools
Customer:
- Servicer Designer
- Service Configuration
Producer:
- Service Provider
TeliaSonera
provides mobile
services (telephony,
text and multimedia
messaging, Internet
access, etc.) that are
configured by the
customer according
its personal needs,
allowing TeliaSonera
to create revenues
streams based-on a
pay-for-service
model.
Customers receive
and pay just for
those services that
better suit their
communication
service needs.
(7) Real-Time Marketing and Service Adaptation: The valuation of products and services will
always depend strongly on customer perspective, according to his/her specific needs in certain time,
location and context. Thus, service adaptation and on-demand customisation are required nowadays
to satisfy customers‟ needs in the right moment, place and way. Hence, with higher adaptability in a value
creation system to enhance service features through incorporating interactivity into the configuration of
service components, the higher service value (and profitability), since the value creation system is capable
of satisfying the specific current needs of a customer with a tailored service. In today‟s business world,
reducing time-to-market is the only way to address customer needs at runtime, and this ability is the key
factor to respond successfully to the existing business opportunities, strongly related to the present
customers needs (Tien and Berg, 2003).
This style of value co-creation tries to provide a more direct interaction between the customer and
the service provider, allowing the customer to play a more active role in the service adaptation process,
and therefore in a real-time value co-creation process. Thus, higher levels of customer interaction are
required to facilitate dialogue (communication) between the firm and the individual customer, and in this
sense ICT-infrastructures plays a key factor as enablers of intelligent customer interaction platforms that
represent a service creation environment in which service adaptation is tailored by the customer on
the concept of context of use and related to a service level agreement negotiated with the service provider.
In order to conclude, service adaptation frequently falls on the shoulders of frontline customer contact
employees, meaning that real-time marketing and service adaptation depends more on employees‟ ability
to perform the complex customisation task through an interpersonal interaction with the customer, that on
technology that just represents a tool that helps to facilitate a communication channel during the process
of service customisation (Gwinner, 2005) (e.g. Contact Centre Dialogue, CEMEX, FEDEX Tracking
Systems).
Table 7 Real-Time Marketing and Service Adaptation: FEDEX Example Strategy Description Actors Interaction Value Activities Producer Value Customer Value
Real-Time
Marketing
and Service
Adaptation
FEDEX service
strategy offers a
catalogue of services
to be selected by the
customer according
to its needs and
preferences, together
with some optional
adding value services
such as: package
insurance, tracking,
delivering
confirmation, etc.
Servicer
Provider +
User as
Servicer
Selector
=
Service
Adaptation
Service
Provision
Platforms
Customer:
- Service Features Selection
Producer:
- Service Provider based-on
a catalogue, including some
added-value services.
FEDEX adapts its
service based-on a
catalogue from
which the customer
can select different
mailing features
such as: traditional
or express deliver,
insurance amount
for its package, etc.
and complements it
value offer with
some free additional
added-value services
to win the customer
preference.
Customers will
receive more than
a typical mailing
service including
some other added-
value services that
guarantee the safe
package delivery:
e.g. Insured in case
of lost or damage,
package tracking
during the mailing
process, and
confirmation of
who received and at
what time and date
the package.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
10
(8) Personalised Experience Value and Knowledge Co-Creation: Finally, this is the new
value co-creation style promoted by Prahalad & Ramaswamy (2004) where the firm and the customer
interact within an experience environment to co-create unique experiences of value, or an “experience of
one”. The personalised experience of a value co-creation process is about high-quality interactions with
individual customers with the aim of engaging consumers and organisations in an on-going dialogue
about the pros and cons of tailoring a product or a service, allowing them to make joint decisions about
the principles of informed choices, and recognising the cost, quality and risk/safety implications of
the choices made.
By engaging in an on-going dialogue consumers and organisation both can evaluate jointly their
choices as they go along in the value co-creation process of a product or a service that serve as facilitator
to deliver the co-creation experience. The value co-creation process gives the customer an experience of
greater level of knowledge and expertise about the product or the service that he/she helps to co-construct,
and of course a greater level of self-esteem that could be translated into customer satisfaction; and on
the other hand, organisations (engineers) feel that they have more insights about customers‟ individual
desires to serve better to their specific needs. The basis of value therefore shifts from physical
products/services (outputs) to a total co-creation experience, which includes the whole product/service
lifecycle from its co-design to its delivery. As well as other interactions with the customer that enhance
consumers‟ trust in company‟s capabilities to co-construct unique value, which implies personal meaning
to customers knowledge, insight, enjoyment, satisfaction, and excitement during their individual
involvement in the value co-creation process and its derivation on an on-demand experience in a specific
context of space and time, and for a specific event or need (Ramaswamy, 2006).
In this new value co-creation mode, managers must attend to the quality of co-creation experiences
(e.g. experience quality management), and not just the quality of the firms products, processes and
services (e.g. total quality management), considering that quality depends on the infrastructure for
interaction (the experience environment) and the quality of service attendance (dialogue/interaction)
between company‟s employees and the consumer. Therefore, the organisational challenge relies on
understanding how customers differ in their perceptions of experience attributes (e.g. convenience
factors) in order to create the organisational capabilities to be able to grant customer wishes and
aspirations and solve its frustrations in different experience-based forms of value that rely on a
combination of sensory and rational judgement of value, because products or services could be the same
but the customer co-constructs different and unique experiences of value (Ramaswamy, 2006)
(e.g. iPod/iTunes, AMAZON, MEDTRONICS, JOHN DEERE, ON STAR).
Table 8 Personalised Experience Value and Knowledge Co-Creation: iPod/iTunes by Apple Example Strategy Description Actors Interaction Value Activities Producer Value Customer Value
Personalised
Experience
Value and
Knowledge
Co-Creation
Apple offers multiple
experiences to their
customers when
they buy an iPOD,
through iTunes
interactive platform,
allowing them to
personalise and add
content to their
devices and evolve
them by acquiring
and installing new
gadgets on them.
Experiences
Providers +
Users =
Unique
Experiences
Interactive
Platforms
Customer:
- Interact
- Experience
Producer:
- Experiences Providers
Apple using iTunes
platform creates
an open dialogue
channel with
the iPod owners,
through which can
help the customer
to evolve and live
new experiences
with its product by
personalising it with
new gadgets that are
sale or some of them
provided for free in
the iTunes store.
Apple iTunes
platform allows
the iPod owners
to reproduce their
music and videos,
organise their
playing-lists, buy
music and videos
over the Internet,
receive music news
according to their
preferences (new
releases, concerts,
etc.), keep statistics
of the music listen
and videos watched,
listen to Internet
radio stations, etc.
living multiple
experiences.
In summary, what can be concluded of this section is that each style of value co-creation requires
different capabilities in organisations to get effectively involved in the value co-creation process together
with their customers, and of course that some of the co-creation modes can be overlapped in a combined
strategy for value co-creation. Following section will present a reference framework as a first intent
towards the formalisation of a methodology for building and sustaining experience-centric networks
conformed by collaborative networked organisations and customer communities.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
11
5. A Experience-Centric Network Reference Framework
Conventional ways of gaining competitive advantages like cost, quality and response-time will not go
away, but in order to compete successfully in the future companies will require building new capabilities
to create value through experiences 2
together with their customers, rather than based-on the traditional
product-centric approach (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Building new capabilities to compete in
the future implies the design and development of innovative experience environments supported
by collaborative ICT-infrastructures. This enables the interaction between customers‟ communities and
networked organisations participating in experience-centric networks that promote/allow the co-creation
of value. Therefore shifting the bases of competition from products and services to experiences (Romero
& Molina, 2009).
Creating experience-centric networks (interface networks)3 requires crafting highly interactive and
collaborative experience environments (e-platforms), and multiple experience gateways, that work as
communication spaces and channels for firm-customer interaction allowing the consumer to shape
his/her own personal experiences in a ubiquitous context in a fast, simple, opportune, and secure
way. Following paragraphs will depict a reference framework (see Fig. 1) as a synthetic structure of
guidelines for describing a set of concepts, methods and technologies necessary for creating successful
experience-centric networks and their supporting experience environments (Romero & Molina, 2009).
Experience-Centric Network
Experience Environments
Value Co-Creation
Strategy Definition
Co-Creators Targeting
(Business Allies)
Trust
Building
Capabilities
Provisioning
Rewarding
Mechanisms
Collaborative Networked
Organisations
Customer
CommunitiesInteraction Channels
Co-Creators Targeting
(Customers)
Fig. 1 Experience-Centric Network Reference Framework (Romero & Molina, 2009)
(1) Value Co-Creation Strategy Definition. Strategy helps organisations to be prepared for
competing in the future. A strategy definition allows organisations to identify new opportunities to bring
value to their customers and stakeholders. A value co-creation strategy refers to the description of
the manner in which a network of organisation intents to gain competitive advantage by involving their
customers and business allies in a jointly value creation process. A value co-creation strategy describes
the actions aimed at configuring a value co-creation system as a set of people, organisations and
technology acting as a symbiotic business ecosystem in which organisations and customers interact in
dynamic and reciprocal relations towards their commitment in the process of co-producing offerings:
products, services and experiences, in a mutually beneficial producer/customer relationship (Normman &
Ramirez, 1993). In this sense, value should be understood as the benefits created from helping customers
to achieve their desires and aspirations with their products and services (experiences), and as a result of
the revenue created from tailoring customer individual requirements (Romero & Molina, 2009).
2 Experience(s) – Interactions between customer and producer for personalising/shaping a product or
service based upon the customer‟s specific needs and situations (e.g. context). 3 Interface Network – A meta-network compromising a network of enterprises (designers, manufactures,
brokers, etc.) merged with a network of (lead) customers, which is supported by an adequate
collaboration platform and infrastructure, creating a synergetic innovation ecosystem.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
12
Furthermore, a strategy is adaptable by nature rather than a rigid set of instructions of how to create
value. Hence, business models as definers of the value creation priorities in an organisation should be
continuously reviewed in response to actual and possible changes in perceived market conditions (e.g.
business intelligence) and evolve the enterprise strategy as the business environment and customers‟
needs change (Romero & Molina, 2009).
In a value co-creation context, strategies and business models are continuously shaped over time in
a discovering process of new sources of value and new opportunities and ways for co-creating it
by/for the customers and organisations in a short- and long-term. Therefore, strategy definition will be a
process of continuous discovery, active learning and adaptation within an agile business ecosystem
capable of accessing new competencies, rapidly re-allocating resources and leveraging the organisational
capabilities and capacities to compete based-on experiences (Romero & Molina, 2009).
(2) Co-Creators Targeting. Selecting the right criteria to target the right co-creators is a major task in
the process of constructing effective co-creation partnerships with customers and business allies. Therefore
when selecting the most suitable co-creators two things are important to bear in mind: Not all customers
can be good co-creators. This role depends on their complementary competencies understood as
their knowledge, skills, expertise and behaviours (Vakola et al, 2007) in the experience co-creation
domain, added to their enthusiastic attitudes to enhance existing products (features) or services
(characteristics) to match customers‟ requirements or co-create new ones that will serve to the new
consumers‟ necessities. Furthermore, also not all business allies can be good co-creators. This role also
depends on the organisations‟ complementary competencies understood as their processes capabilities
and resources capacities (Ermilova & Afsarmanesh, 2006) that are required to co-produce products and
services that serve as recipients to deliver co-creation experiences (Romero & Molina, 2009).
Some aspects to keep in mind when targeting the right co-creators include defining the kind of
partnership to be established, making clear its aims as a set of common interests and understandings of
the joint goals and the requirements for working together in a trustable cognitive, normative and affective
collaborative environment based-on dialogue and common values to integrate complementary expertises
to co-create value (Ståhle & Laento, 2000).
After targeting the right co-creators, then it is time to obtain their commitment to act jointly to co-
create value in collaboration (business) opportunities. The next two elements of the reference framework
will focus on this challenge by suggesting the creation of collaborative networked organisations as
dynamic organisational forms able to rapidly establish and adapt to changing market conditions such as
customers‟ needs and preferences (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2005; 2006); and the creation of
virtual customer communities as experience-sharing and user communities aimed to inform and allow
consumers to discuss about the quality and drawbacks of products and services prior to making a
purchase, and after the purchase is made, help them to use at best their products and services by making
them aware of all their potentialities and if necessary assisting them to solve their problems (Curien et al,
2007).
(3) Collaborative Networked Organisation Creation. In today‟s society, value creation has become
far more dependent on intangibles such as knowledge, relationships and branding, and very soon on
experiences. Thus, characteristics such as flexibility, agility and adaptability have become the new
key organisational success factors to deliver customer value, which has also become increasingly
complex, dynamic, and dependent upon consumers‟ expectations. Therefore, the possibility of rapidly
configuring a group of organisations into a goal-oriented network, like the “classical” virtual organisation,
triggered by a value co-creation opportunity and specially tailored to satisfy customer‟s specific
requirements is frequently mentioned as an expression of agility in customer value delivery (Romero &
Molina, 2009).
Virtual Organisations (VOs) represent temporary alliances of organisations driven by the objective
of grasping a single collaboration opportunity and dissolve once their mission/goal has been
accomplished. Its temporary nature has proven to better fit the market dynamics and the variable duration
of today‟s business opportunities (e.g. time-to-market), and its VO partners‟ competencies integration
to better respond to customers‟ specific needs and requirements. Nevertheless, the effective creation of
truly dynamic VOs, which are appropriate for catching-up with customers‟ continues changing
preferences, since customer value is contextual, requires the pre-existence of suitable VO Breeding
Environments (VBEs) meant for preparing organisations to rapidly get involved in collaboration
opportunity-based VOs (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2006; 2007).
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
13
VBEs are aimed at adhering a group of organisations and their support institutions into a base
long-term cooperation agreement, and the adoption of common operating principles and infrastructures,
with the main goal of increasing both their chances and their preparedness towards collaboration in
potential VOs. Furthermore, VBEs guarantee the readiness of its members to quickly get engaged in
dynamic VOs by reducing the set-up times in contrast of selecting organisations from an “open universe”
of companies that have never collaborated before (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2006; 2007).
Once a collaborative network has the conditions provided by a VBE to support the rapid and fluid
configuration of VOs when a co-creation opportunity arises, the possibility of creating or redesigning a
value creation system on-demand as a co-operative venture among business allies will emerge from
the breeding environment with the capability and capacity to address each co-creation opportunity with a
tailored value creation system that fits exactly with customer specific requirements (See Fig. 2). In this
sense, each co-creation opportunity will denote a VO creation process with its corresponding custom-
made value creation system within the VBE, integrating the skills or core competencies and resources of
the business allies (VO partners) involved for adequately supporting a co-creation opportunity together
with the customer involvement and its specific needs. Under these conditions and according to
VO lifecycle (creation/operation-evolution/dissolution) each value creation system will be organisationally
and technically integrated to co-create value for a specific customer and just for the period of existence of
the co-creation opportunity which is being responded at the moment (Katzy & Obozinski, 1998; Allee,
2000; Fine et al, 2002; Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2006; 2007; Romero & Molina, 2009).
Finally, the possibility of systematically integrating VO partners‟ skills and resources in short-term
coalition to serve customers‟ specific requirements represents a new source of sustainable competitive
advantage in a changing global market of evolving and emerging customer needs (Katzy & Obozinski,
1998; Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2006; 2007).
VO
VBECollaborative
Networked
Organisations
Value System Redesign
On-demand
Open
Industry
Co-Creation
driven VOs
Fig. 2 VO Creation within VO Breeding Environments driven by Co-Creation Opportunities
(Adapted from Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2007)
(4) Customer Communities Creation. Promoting the creation of virtual customer communities
provides companies with new interaction channels to co-create value through customer relationship,
by incorporating enthusiastic consumers that would be difficult to reach without the support of
information and communities technologies (Tzu-Ying & Jen-Fan, 2004). Virtual customer communities
represent valuable forums in which organisation‟s products and services, together with customer service,
can be discussed, analysed, criticised and potentially improved. Customer communities stand for real
living laboratories in where multiple users (consumers) of the same or different products or services can
come together to discuss the quality and satisfaction level of their current products and services,
or comment about ideas for new ones, outside of the commercial negotiation. The social interaction
among customers in this kind of virtual communities represents potentially insightful exchange
of business intelligence, and a great possibility to foster companies‟ inter-relationships with their
consumers (Manville, 2004).
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
14
10 best practices for building and facilitating online customer communities according to Communispace
Corporation (2004) are: (1) Invite the right customers, keep the communities private & small, and
categorise customers to uncover interests, passions and willingness to participate - avoiding using simply
demographic and geographic criteria. (2) View community members as advisors to the company,
not as a market research panel. (3) Find the “social glue” by focusing on topics of shared interest and
relevance for the community, rather on just company‟s interests. (4) Work at building the community
by creating activities/rituals that help customers to feel comfortable in participating. (5) Be a genuine,
open and encourage community‟s facilitator by reinforcing proactive behaviour. (6) “Just plain ask”,
the best way is to just ask, simply and straightforwardly. (7) Pay even more attention to what members
initiate, the best insights often come from discussions started by members - “listen more than ask”.
(8) Don‟t squelch the negative, the best lessons come from hearing about those things that annoy,
disappoint or outrage customers, so encourage members to give the good, bad and the ugly. (9) Don‟t ask
members for too much too often or they will become fatigued. (10) Make sure the community is built on
multiple underlying technologies and methodologies so that people aren‟t stuck just answering surveys or
posting to message boards (e.g. live-chats, visual profiles, upload advertisements, video-diaries, etc.).
Furthermore, virtual customer communities represent part of the knowledge revolution in where vast
complement of knowledge and understanding can be tapped from customers, and combined with skilled
and experienced knowledge workers (engineers as co-creators) in a greater customer intimacy and
synergetic win-win situations (co-creation opportunities) to improve products and services by
collaborating in a jointly value creation process to co-create products and services specially tailored
to fit customers‟ desires. Therefore, any company capable of creating and sustaining customer
communities related to its products, services and overall strategy can expect to drive higher revenues,
deeper customer loyalty and a real competitive advantage in today‟s economy (Manville, 2004).
As a final remark, managing value co-creation in customer communities remains as one of the key
research areas requiring that value managers, on both consumer and producer side, understand
the value co-creation strategies that drive, sustain and support experience environments, and thus
comprehend more what are the process and competencies that customers employ to render value
according to their necessities, so companies will be able to create the capabilities to support those value
co-creation processes in experience-centric networks (Möller et al, 2007).
Customer
Communities
Open
Market
Fig. 3 Customer Communities Creation
(5) Trust Building. Stability and success of experience-centric networks requires the right balance of
trust among organisations and customers (Msanjila & Afsarmanesh, 2007). Trust is the glue that holds
and links organisations and customers together, making possible the process of value co-creation. Trust is
the atmosphere and the medium in which customers and organisations are dialoguing. It is also the base
of cooperation among customers and organisations, and it is the main requirement in experience-centric
networks in order for them to exist (Mezgár, 2006). Thus, trust represents a bilateral process that requires
mutual commitment and endeavour of organisations and customers when attempting to keep their
promises (e.g. building credibility). Some strategies identified by Jarvenpaa et al (1998) suggests that
trust building in virtual environments could be facilitated with: (1) proactive style of actions, (2) work-
focused interactions, (3) optimistic team-spirit, (4) dynamic leadership, clear roles and objectives,
(5) frequent interactions, and (6) immediate feedback. Hence, trust in virtual environments relies on
virtual interaction and meeting to commitments (Latane et al, 1995).
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
15
In the co-creation paradigm, trust building can be supported through Prahalad‟s & Ramaswamy‟s
(2004) DART building blocks: Dialogue, Access, Risk-assessment and Transparency. Therefore, in a
value co-creation it is clear that engaging customers directly in the co-creation of value involves risks for
both customer and producer, so keeping this in mind, dialogue will be the element that encourages not
just knowledge sharing, but even more importantly, shared understanding between companies‟ and
customers‟ concerns. Additionally, dialogue also gives consumers an opportunity to interject their view of
the outcomes of value into the process of value co-creation. Moreover, giving customers access to
knowledge, tools and expertise helps them to construct their own experience outcomes, and this also
challenges the notion that ownership is the only way for consumers to experience value by focusing on
access to experiences at multiple experience gateways (interaction points), as opposed to mere ownership
(Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Ramaswamy, 2006).
Furthermore, since risks are involved for both sides, risk assessment assumes that if consumers become
co-creators of value, they will demand more information about potential risks of goods and services,
but they will also have to bear more responsibility for dealing with those risks. Thus, transparency of
information in the interaction processes will be necessary for customers to participate effectively in a
co-creation mode, and to build trust between organisations and consumers. Concluding, DART building
blocks must be enabled by technical and social infrastructures (e-platforms and virtual communities) that
allow consumers to co-construct experiences they value, and represent business value for organisations
(Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Ramaswamy, 2006).
(6) Interaction Channels Building. Experience gateways construction represents the creation of
multiple customer interaction channels (e.g. Web-based and traditional ones: Web-chat, e-mail, phone,
fax, letter, Face-to-Face, etc.), including experience rooms (e.g. sand-boxes)4 aimed at providing
consumers with an end-to-end experience across all the systems, people and organisations in a value
network, and through all interaction points (channels) that customers use to create and shape their own
personal experiences with their product/service providers by having access to a co-creation toolkit
to construct their own experience outcomes by co-designing and co-developing their own products and
services. Moreover, it is important to recall at this point that „value co-creation‟ is contextual, and
therefore customers‟ interactions are the key essentials in the value co-creation process with their
product/service providers (Romero & Molina, 2009).
Furthermore, supporting multiple interaction channels, and at the same time avoid losing customers‟
value co-creation context when he/she moves from one interaction channel to another, will require a new
generation of customer contact centers (e.g. call-centers, help-desks) known as customer interaction hubs
capable of processing distributed and heterogeneous sources of information, regardless of the multiple
communication channels available to manage a customer unified and contextual profile to deliver unique
customer experiences of value (eGain, 2007).
Customer interaction hubs are emerging ICT-infrastructures able to support customer interactions
across multiple channels and provide a uniform response to customer demands at any point of
the value co-creation process; allowing organisations to choose the right approach and method for
responding to a customer requirement based-on a common view of his/her experience context. The
end-result will be the right response with the right information for the customer, achieving customer
satisfaction (eGain, 2007).
Some recommendations when building and managing customer interaction channels are: (1) Provide
multiple interaction channels to customers to allow them to choose which channel(s) is/are more
convenient for customer value creation process; (2) Design each experience gateway considering
DART building blocks; (3) Manage experience quality management across all interaction channels - “it is
about an integral experience”; (4) Ensure best practices to standardise the quality of customer service
across all interactions channels and co-creator agents; (5) Enable intelligent cross-communication to turn
the customer hub into a real experience environment; and (6) Consider multiple customers‟ choices from
a simple transaction process (e.g. a purchase) to the overall co-creation experience through the interactive
personalisation of products and services (Prahalad & Ramawasmamy, 2004; eGain, 2007).
4 Experience Room - An interactive environment where customers “play” with products and shape them.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
16
One question that could arise when building interaction channels for the customers is where should an
organisation create these experience gateways, and a possible response to this strategic question is
suggested by Ramaswamy & Gouillart (2007), who recommend the use of “interaction maps” aimed
at discovering key interaction points where companies can devise new or better interactions for improving
dialogue, access to knowledge, mutual understanding of risks and transparency in the value co-creation
process with their customers. These interaction maps can be represented in a formal way by using
UML 2.0 interactive diagrams such as a sequence diagram displaying the time sequence of the entities
participating in an interactive process, or even better, collaboration diagrams displaying an interaction
process organised around the entities and their links to one another. Using this kind of UML interaction
diagrams could allow organisations to capture the behaviour of a single co-creation case by visualising
the collaboration between entities in a value system to accomplish their value co-creation goal (Romero &
Molina, 2009).
Another formal approach to map firm-customer interactions could be through a Business Process
Modelling (BPM) approach as a way of providing organisations with the capability to understand their
interactive/collaborative business procedures in a graphical notation and comprehend better the
organisational collaborative performance in each co-creation process with the customers and business
partners (Romero & Molina, 2009).
Another possibility could be the use of simple cross-functional diagrams that can also serve to
the process of mapping firm-customer interactions (Romero & Molina, 2009).
In summary, experience environments will require the integration of multiple experience gateways as
enablers of customer interaction with the node organisation and its network to co-create unique and
personalised experiences of value (Prahalad & Ramawasmamy, 2004).
(7) Capabilities Provisioning. An experience-centric network can be understood as a solution
generator capable of associating organisations core-competencies and resources into collaborative
networks on one side, and on the other side collect enough consumers‟ knowledge from customer
communities to understand how to satisfy personal consumers‟ requirements. Therefore, collaborative
networked organisations and customer communities‟ creation represent one of the most suitable ways for
providing a group of organisations and consumers with the right capabilities and training to efficiently
co-create value within experience environments (Romero & Molina, 2009).
Collaborative networks allow the integration or organisations in networked structures (e.g. Virtual
Organisations) that represent tailored on-demand value creation systems with the capabilities to adapt and
rapidly reconfigure resources and accommodate them to satisfy consumers‟ demands within experience
environments, which can deliver personalised products and services that complain with customers‟
specific needs. Property designed value creation systems will allow collaborative networked organisations
to perform value co-creation processes for satisfying consumers‟ specific requirements in a fast and
efficient way thanks to the advantages and benefits of collaboration (Romero & Molina, 2009).
On the other hand, customer communities can provide organisations with the information to recognise
with enough time which will be the new required capabilities to satisfy consumers‟ needs and aspirations
in the near future, so networked organisations (e.g. a VO Breeding Environment) can recruit new business
allies that can contribute to the emergence of new competencies to support proactive interaction between
consumers and producers in the conjoined personalisation of products and services (Romero & Molina,
2009).
By integrating collaborative networks and customer communities into experience-centric networks,
both entities will be able to actively select the competencies required for co-creating personalised
experiences in experience environments. This, with the technical and social infrastructures to align
different business and consumer value co-creation processes with the agility and flexibility required
to capture the time frame of business co-creation opportunities (e.g. collaboration // business //
opportunity) (Romero & Molina, 2009).
Lastly, sustainable competitive advantages and business success in the emerging experience economy
will depend on organisational networks capability to speed-up, innovate and focus on core competencies
of their business allies to meet consumers‟ specific requirements and demands, capture new markets and
beat the competition by creating unique experiences with profitable business grow. Furthermore,
value will no longer be developed inside organisations, but from the interaction with consumers in
experience gateways allowing the co-design and delivering of personalised product and service offerings.
Thus, innovation and commercialisation of technologies, products and services will not be an
organisational process, rather a value co-creation process with customers and business allies in the rising
experience economy (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000; 2003; 2004).
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
17
Experience
Environments
Value Co-Creation Value Co-Creation Value Co-Creation
Fig. 4 Experience Environments
(8) Rewarding Mechanisms. Co-creation may tap into the intellectual capital of customers; therefore
companies should acknowledge their consumers and incentive them for their contributions, especially for
those ideas that represent a real economic benefit for the organisation. Companies should also keep in
mind that rewarding consumers (e.g. free trials, samples of products, prizes for the best customer
innovations) is one of the best mechanisms to keep alive proactive behaviour during co-creation
processes (Von Krogh, 2006; Trendwatching, 2006).
Considering the above, if companies want to keep the ideas flowing from their customers and their
communities, they should show pre-emptive generosity, taking into consideration consumers contributions
that are more significant for value co-creation, and reward customers by exchanging intellectual property
with them when they engage in a value co-creation processes (e.g. co-development, co-design, etc.) or
simply share royalties in exchange for their ideas (Von Krogh, 2006; Trendwatching, 2006).
Ultimately, a value co-creation process moves along to a joint product/service development, where
individual contributions to value co-creation become more difficult to determine, and for this reason,
ownership of intellectual property (e.g. intellectual capital) becomes quite troublesome. Therefore, new
research in intellectual property management is required; especially in the field of customer involvement
in value co-creation processes (Romero & Molina, 2009).
The result of following the set of guidelines described in the reference framework presented in
this paper represents the first steps towards formalising a methodology for the creation of experience-
centric networks (see Fig. 5) (Romero & Molina, 2009).
Value Co-Creation Value Co-Creation Value Co-Creation Value Co-Creation Value Co-Creation Value Co-CreationExperience
Environments
VOs
Open
Industry
VOs
Collaborative
Networked
Organisations
VBE
VBE
Value System Redesign
On-demandValue System
RedesignOn-demand
Customer
CommunitiesOpen
Market
Co-Creation
driven VOs
Co-Creation
driven VOs
Fig. 5 Experience-Centric Networks Scenario (Adapted from Romero & Molina, 2009).
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
18
As a complement to the framework proposed in this paper, the following section will present a brief
perspective on how value co-creation can drive the appearance of new evolutionary and collaborative
business models for the emerging reality of value co-creation systems based-on customers-company‟s
interactions.
6. Designing Collaborative Business Models for Value Co-creation
In a World of e-consumers, information systems and tremendous e-commerce opportunities a wide-range
of business co-creation strategies are emerging (e.g. user-centric, on-demand based, context
aware). Moreover, the increasing market dynamics, in addition to the rapid evolution of information and
communication technologies, are allowing the integration of different technological capabilities to offer
“dialogue, transparency, access and risk-benefits driven by ubiquitous connectivity” as a novel
customer-centric approach supported by virtual environments that facilitate the co-construction of
fresh and valuable customer‟s experiences, and create genuine competitive advantages for
organisations. Therefore, in this momentum of emerging business co-creation strategies and e-platforms,
new business models are required to conceptualise and design successful collaborative and trustable
experience environments that best suit with the new dynamics of producer/customer relationship in
the co-creation and distribution of value (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Galli et al, 2005).
In this context, business models should be understood as “conceptual tools containing a set of objects,
concepts and their relationships to express the business logic of a firm” (Osterwalder, 2004), or a
collaborative network. A business model can help to describe the value proposition that a collaborative
network wants to co-create with its customers, and also the infrastructure/technological architecture
needed to co-create, market, and deliver this value proposition, within a set of organisational
arrangements concerning the governance model of cooperation to deliver such value proposition (Romero
et al, 2007b), and making clear which are the costs, investments, and risks required to generate profitable
and sustainable revenue streams (Osterwalder, 2004; Romero et al, 2006).
Furthermore, business models ontology can be used to capture, analyse, understand, and communicate
the business logic behind value co-creation in the context of collaborative networks and customer
communities. Using Osterwalder‟s (2004) business model ontological approach, adapted by Romero et al
(2006), the following paragraphs will describe a skeleton for the design of new business models for value
co-creation systems. By capturing the essential elements and their relationships that should be identified
and described to create sustainable value systems that provide wealth to all parties involved and the same
time underline the rationality of the value co-creation opportunities. Two important characteristics
identified by Romero et al (2006) in collaborative business models are: 1) a multi-value system
perspective, including the identification of different types of value: economical, social and knowledge;
and 2) a multi-stakeholder approach, identifying each stakeholder‟s participation in the value creation
process. Both characteristics were used to adapt the four pillars and nine building blocks of Osterwalder‟s
ontology in the sense of collaborative business environments. A graphical representation of collaborative
business model components is shown in Fig. 6.
(1) Product Pillar. This pillar engages the multi-value proposition building block definition, which
focuses on the identification of new business opportunities for creating “experience environments” that
could generate both customer‟s and stakeholders‟ value using Prahalad‟s & Ramaswamy‟s (2004)
building blocks for value co-creation: “dialogue, access, risk management and transparency”, which can
be referred by the acronym DART. In a co-creation process, value propositions should emerge from
the space of interaction (the experience environment) where individual consumers interact with customer
communities, as well as with the extended networks of companies to co-create their own experiences of
value, making the business ecosystem sustainable because of its creation of wealth for all parties involved.
(2) Multi-Stakeholder Interface Product. In this pillar, the definition of three building blocks is
addressed. First, the target stakeholders’ building block which refers to the recognition of potential
motivated customers that better fit as candidates for participating in value co-creation strategies. As well
as the value offered to different stakeholders as remuneration for enabling organisational capabilities
to rapidly develop and change products and services depending on customer requirements and satisfaction
levels. Second, distribution channel building block which illustrates the range of experience gateways
(points-of-interaction) as the different choices that a consumer has to interact with the firm to shape its
co-creation experience. In this building block technology plays a key role as the enabler for building
experience co-creation platforms that enhance on a quick, easy, convenient, and safely way consumers‟
value co-creation experiences (Ramaswamy, 2006). Lastly, stakeholders’ relationship building block
depicts the kind of interactions and transactions that customers and organisations establish to co-construct
profitable and personalised value co-creation experiences.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
19
(3) Infrastructure Management Pillar. In this pillar, the definition of three building blocks is also
attended. First, multi-value configuration building block addresses the arrangement of activities,
resources and knowledge which are necessary to co-create value for all stakeholders, especially for the
customers. One way to assess the multi-value configuration of an experience environment is through
the identification of the value balance for each stakeholder (value offered vs. value received). Second,
capabilities building block refers to the set of resources and skills required in organisations to create and
sustain experience environments that could attend to the dimensions of choice in consumer-company
interaction to provide experience-centric options that reflect customers‟ desires. Finally, partnership
building block describes the agreements concerning the cooperation between organisations and customers
to collaborate in order to co-create value for all parties involved in the value creation process:
a. partnerships among organisations in the form of collaborative networks to share skills or
core-competencies and resources in order to better respond to collaborative business opportunities;
b. partnerships among customers to share their experiences with products and services to become more
“informed, networked, empowered and active consumers” (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004); and
c. partnership among collaborative networks and customer communities to co-create value.
(4) Financial Aspects Pillar. This pillar includes the definition of two building blocks, the cost
structure building block as the representation in money of all the means used for creating and sustaining
the experience environments: ICT, staff, billing, marketing, administrative and operational costs; and the
revenue model building block describing how the experience environments make money and achieve their
sustainability through a variety of revenue flows, proving in this way the success of the collaborative
business model.
Product
Multi-
Stakeholder
Interface
Infrastructure
Management
Financial
Aspects
Multi-
Value
Proposition
Target
Stakeholders
Multi-Value
Configuration
Distribution
Channel
Stakeholders
Relationship
Cost
Structure
Revenue
Model
Capabilities Partnership
Fig. 6 Guidelines for CNO Business Model Definition (Osterwalder, 2004; adapted by Romero et al, 2006)
To close this section what is important to keep in mind is that in collaborative endeavours, and
therefore co-creation environments, value propositions are common ground between collaborative
networked organisations and customer communities. Collaborative networks should combine the
capabilities of their members to create new abilities to better support the personalisation of experiences
and with customer knowledge synergies co-create real personal value propositions where the consumer is
starting to play an increasingly important role in the co-construction of value offers.
7. Conclusions
The current trend of customer involvement will continue maturing in the following years, changing
customer‟s role from a pure consumer of products and services to a partner in the value creation process,
and as a result organisational structures and business models will migrate into new strategic alliances and
collaborative models based-on open business models that will support the creation and operation of
adequate collaboration e-platforms for value co-creation. A lot of research remains to be done towards
closing the interaction gaps that represent big obstacles for an effective involvement of customers in
communities and organisations in collaborative networks to create the synergy necessary to integrate both
sides in experience-centric networks capable of satisfying customers‟ needs, wants, and aspirations, and
at the same time organisations revenue goals.
Mass-customisation, personalisation, customer integration and open-innovation trends will continue as
early-strategies of value co-creation between organisations and customers, but as mentioned by Prahalad
and Ramaswamy (2004): “The future will belong to those companies that continuously generate new
knowledge from customers‟ experiences, and identify and enable new co-creation opportunities to support
compelling experience environments”.
Romero, D. and Molina, A. (2011). Collaborative Networked Organisations and Customer Communities: Value Co-Creation and Co-Innovation in
the Networking Era, in Journal of Production Planning & Control, Volume 22, Issue 4, Special Issue on “Co-Innovation and Collaborative Networks".
Taylor & Francis, ISSN: 0953-7287 (Print) 1366-5871 (Online), Impact Factor 0.561 (2008) DOI: 10.1080/09537287.2010.536619
20
In this sense, this paper may be concluded by mentioning that the effectiveness of co-creation will
depend on how much value can be jointly created for customers and organisations in experience
environments, and also on how much the ability of single or networked organisation is developed
to select, invest and exploit co-creation opportunities with the highest potential to improve customers
satisfaction, business revenue streams and perhaps create a new source of competitive advantage in
today‟s emerging experience economy.
8. Acknowledgement
The research presented in this document is a contribution for the ECOLEAD Project, funded by
the European Community, FP6 IP 506958, for the “Rapid Product Realisation for Developing Markets
Using Emerging Technologies” Research Chair, ITESM, Campus Monterrey, and for the “New Business
Models for the Knowledge Economy” Research Chair, ITESM, Campus Ciudad de México. This paper is
an extended version of the original article published in the 10th IFIP Working Conference on Virtual
Enterprises (PRO-VE‟10) (Romero & Molina, 2009).
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