By Oscar Berg, Future Office Evangelist
April 07, 2011 - 11:43 AM
Just a few thoughts on co-creation.
The act of creating something together with others is something that builds community, culture (shared attitudes and behaviors within the community) and social identity (our identity in relationship to the community).
Co-creation is what happens in a constructive conversation. If there is no (constructive) conversation, no co-creation will happen. That is what more and more organizations are learning when exploring social media: the value is created in the conversations.
Co-creation that happens in constructive conversations between producers and consumers builds community and might result in the brand becoming part of the social identity of the consumers. There is no better way to get loyal returning customers.
In my opinion co-creation through open and constructive conversations is THE use case also when it comes to internal use of social technologies. Besides allowing people to connect, share and collaborate across locations and organizations, it helps to builds community and engagement.
Social technologies facilitate co-creation by enabling open and constructive conversations:
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They provide easy to use tools for many-to-many conversations that anyone can use without lots of training and just access to a device with Internet connection
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They allow anyone who has the will and something to contribute to participate, thereby enabling a diversity of ideas, experiences and opinions to fuel the conversation and co-creation
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Their lack of preimposed structures and their freedom in format facilitates a more constructive and creative co-creation
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They make it is easier to find / discover and share relevant resources to use for initiating a conversation of feed into an existing conversation
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They allow any media to be used and produced in the co-creation process
Social technologies also facilitate the distribution of the results of a conversation by simplifying sharing and building on network effects, which ensures that the result can be used by anyone who can get value from it. If the output of the co-creation process cannot be shared so it is not used, it has will not add value for any individual who didn’t participate in the actual conversation.
Another aspect of co-creation is that it brings people closer together, creating relationships between those engaged in the co-creation process and who didn't know each other before, as well as strengthening existing relationships.
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This post and comment(s) reflect the personal perspectives of community members, and not necessarily those of their employers or of AIIM International
