Innovation Basics: 3 Key Benefits of Co-Creation

Changing the world, one idea at a time has to start somewhere. Even the organizations that regularly bring about revolutionary change had a first step to take on their journey. In the Innovation Basics series, we focus exclusively on what that first step could look like for newcomers to the innovation world. Follow this guidance to achieve faster, better innovation.

It’s a term that anyone in innovation knows. To ‘co-create’ is a goal that many in this space reach for. However, co-creating effectively is about more than just working with other people to do things differently.

Co-creation – A Definition

At Wazoku, we define co-creation as:

“the collaborative development of new forms of value, from concepts to fully formed solutions.”

Underpinned by our Challenge Driven Innovation® methodology, co-creation with Wazoku takes a number of different forms. Through our platform, you can co-create with staff across your organization.

Similarly, you can extend your reach across your supply chain, involving suppliers and customers in your innovation work. Through the Wazoku Crowd, you can also connect and co-create with start-ups, universities, and an entire world of global problem solvers.

3 Key Benefits of Co-Creation

The ability to co-create in so many different ways is one thing. The benefits of doing so are quite another. These are universal, regardless of which crowd(s) you deploy to co-create with but are key in understanding why you should take up the process in the first place.

1. 1 – Shorter Time to Market:
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The continuous feedback loop that co-creation fosters means that you can act on feedback and insights regularly. This makes it easier to get new products or services to market in record time.

2. 2 – Enhanced Knowledge and Creativity:
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By bringing more voices into your innovation process, the mass of knowledge automatically increases. Alongside this, we often see more creative solutions to existing issues being implemented successfully.

3. 3 – Improved Customer Relations:
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Sourcing solutions to problems or ideas that feed into new products or services directly from those who buy from you makes your customers feel valued. Co-creating with customers has the added benefit of enhancing brand loyalty.

In this blog, we’ve discussed the topic of co-creation. Having defined what it is and illustrated how Wazoku supports co-creation in a range of different guises, we’ve also listed key benefits of businesses co-creating as part of their innovation work.

To read more about how you can co-create, why you should be doing it, and some handy dos and don’ts, check out our Innovation at Scale guide here!