Driving Innovation Through Co-Creation with Customers
What is co creation?
Co creation is the process where brands and consumers work together to create better ideas, products and services. Whilst it is imperative for brands to steer product innovation, customer input is essential in the process.
Co creating is a powerful tool to identify key factors which impact customer experience, and to identify key opportunities for new product development (NPD). It is a crucial process in creating shared value i.e. customer centric value and it is particularly helpful with brand development, brand positioning and ongoing brand management. It can be conducted at any stage; during the development process, from inception and ideation through to the last stages of development.
Ruby Espresso
Ruby ‘Espresso sessions’ are co creation sessions providing the perfect hybrid solution for many client needs. Ruby Espresso has a creative approach, provides a degree of challenge and idea generation, as well as recycling and reviewing existing ideas, in a holistic manner. As the session progresses learnings are built and layered, allowing us to refine the ideas and concepts in a dynamic and fluid way.
It relies on the right team of ‘experts’ being recruited – client stakeholders, creative consumers, but also ‘wild cards’ who could be people from R&D or outside the company (e.g. industry/category experts, advertising or design agencies). These sessions work best when armed with strong strategic or creative minds, influencers and future oriented types.
Co Creation works in 3 ways
1.
It is critical to have great stimulus materials like concept boards with both text and imagery, and any other visual tools which can help unlock thinking, bust myths and get people building, not creating from scratch. If there is good foundation research available, this can be very useful. If not, it should be created.
2.
Participants are mixed into cross-functional teams. Teams then visit the different tables in the Ruby Espresso Café, each table showing a different ‘territory’ or start-point. Ideation is driven by clever use of stimulus and thinking pathways.
3.
The big point of difference for these sessions is that, once each team has exhausted their ideas, they set challenges for the next team to solve and optimize, so that the process continues to BUILD as teams progress through the session from one territory to the next.
