Revisiting Co-Creation: Necessary Success Factors for Crowdsourcing Ideas in a Consumer Business Setting

Companies in the business-to-consumer sector are constantly searching for innovative ways to improve their processes and offerings. Traditionally, corporations have already been implementing new ideas and product developments internally, but in recent years the concept of co-creation has been gaining increasing attention as a new method for innovation. Co-creation, in the form of crowdsourcing ideas and integrating stakeholders in the corporate development processes, not only promises to strengthen the relationship between the firm and consumers but also to help enhance product value, foster innovation and improve product-market fit. Convincing in theory, in the practical business setting co-creation has often proven not a trivial task. However, existing literature has not sufficiently addressed these challenges yet. The paper at hand aims to contribute to closing this research gap, revisiting the concept of co-creation with a specific focus on identifying the issues of and success factors needed for the successful crowdsourcing of ideas in a consumer business setting. For this purpose, successful co-creation strategies of major global brands, including Oreo, DHL and LEGO, with a view of characterizing relevant elements driving the effectiveness of their co-innovation approaches, shall be analyzed. These cases will then be contrasted to an empirical case project of a co-creation campaign of a medium-sized enterprise to highlight both effective and non-effective approaches to co-creation. As a result, some of the key challenges and main points of difficulty in particular for smaller companies in the context of co-creation initiatives will be identified. Keywords: co-creation, consumer business, crowdsourcing, success factors, co-innovation, stakeholder involvement, innovation management, product development