Cocreation.Info

Co-creation in automotive industry

Sardor Tadjiev — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 09:17:38 +0000

Although co-creation has become very popular in marketing field recently, we do not see a lot of co-creation examples in the automotive industry. One of such examples is the BMW’s Co-Creation Lab. In this co-creation initiative entrants are encouraged to exchange innovative ideas on the interior vehicle design. The lab is equipped with special tools that facilitate the co-creation process in terms of creative realization of the proposals. Such co-creation initiatives give chance to young talents to demonstrate their design skills as well as provide BMW with innovative insights to the interior design of a vehicle.
Following this co-creative initiative a lot of conversations have risen and blogs opened to discuss different ideas related to the Co-creation Lab. The Co-Creation Lab blogs have become a meeting place for people with high interest in cars, open to share their ideas and opinions. However, not all car manufacturers are realizing the potentials that are hidden under co-creation initiatives.
When we say co-creation, we usually understand the value creation between the company and the customer. Today I want to speak about value co-creation as a result of strategic partnership between a small car manufacturer in Uzbekistan and an automotive giant General Motors Corporation.
Although not that advanced in the innovative technologies and know-how, Uzbek vehicle manufacturer (UzDaewoo) was able to conquer Russian market with its vehicles produced under the license agreement from Korean “Daewoo Corporation”. This was the result of intensive and collaborative work with the distribution network in the export markets. As a result, the company was able to achieve its maximum production capacity of 200K per year and achieve exports of 110K vehicles to CIS countries.
However, the company did not possess sufficient technological know-how and engineering base to develop its own new vehicle models and grow on its own. Thus, in 2007 the company married to the General Motors corporation, which was considered the rebirth stage of the company lifecycle. The new JV was named GM Uzbekistan (GMUZ). The strategic partnership entailed creation of complete infrastructure for full cycle vehicle production and all the way from supplier relationship building to distribution network development. As a result, parties agreed to introduce two new global platform vehicles that would provide the survival of the Uzbek company for at least next 10 years in the highly competitive automotive market.
Exports play huge role for GMUZ as around 50% of the vehicle parts are imported from abroad which creates demand for earning hard currency.
Since 2007 the strategic partnership has realizes many co-creative ideas and projects. To list few of them, GMUZ with the support of GM was able to facelift its legacy model – Nexia which was a step to prolonging the life of the model. Moreover, as the emission regulations got stricter and stricter in the exports markets the engineeres from both parties worked together in order to meet those new safety and emission requirements. Additionally, in order to develop the production of automotive parts inside the country the agreement was reached to build a new engine (1st stage) and transmission (2nd stage) factories.
The specialists from GM have been working with local suppliers to implement new up-to-date technologies and management systems in their operations. To my eyes, all of the above mentioned achievements and hard work is the result of co-creation initiatives in the face of strategic partnership.

A Primer on Co-Creation

Kerimcan Ozcan — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:16:34 +0000

One of the seminal articles on co-creation is Prahalad and Ramaswamy’s “Co-opting Customer Competence”.

Prahalad and Hart argue that co-creation has the potential to deliver “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”.

Eric von Hippel announces that the age of “Democratizing Innovation” has arrived.

Another good reading is Ramirez’ “Value co-production: intellectual origins and implications for practice and research”. His previous article with Normann, “From value chain to value constellation: designing interactive strategy”, is also recommended.

“Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing” by Vargo and Lusch provides a strong case for why we have to leave behind the goods-based economics.

Journal of Service Research has a special issue on customer engagement with particular emphasis on co-creation. All of the articles are free to download (as of this current posting) and highly interesting.

Ramaswamy argues in “Co-Creation of Value–Towards an Expanded Paradigm of Value Creation” that enterprises must “engage people as active co-creators of value everywhere in the system”. His most recent thinking on this subject, in joint work with Ozcan, develops a theory of co-creation.

Hello Co-Creators!

Kerimcan Ozcan — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 07:09:28 +0000

Welcome to the engagement platform for co-creation knowledge. You are kindly invited to register on the site as a contributor by visiting the box on the right. Upon successfully publishing a few blogs you can become a regular author. If you are seriously committed to the co-creation paradigm and having a lot of fun with this site too, you can eventually become an editor.

One great way of contributing to this knowledge platform is by having your radars wide open for any new practice or application of co-creation, especially in non-English speaking countries. If you can follow media in any language other than English, please do share your findings with us. One very practical tool to facilitate this is using Google Reader app. Through it, you can find and subscribe to blogs and feeds that have significant content related to co-creation. Whenever you come across such examples, you can give a quick summary of the story you just read along with your personal interpretation and commentary.

If you are collecting original data on co-creation, you could share any qualitative or quantitative insights along with the implications for strategy and practice. Please do use our platform as a launching board for publicizing and disseminating your original work.

This platform itself is top to bottom open to co-creation, content-wise and design-wise. Please let us know of any good ideas on how to configure the various sections, how to govern the editorial process, etc.

Looking forward to your co-creative contributions!!