Venkat Ramaswamy

Co‐creating unique value with customers

The traditional system of company‐centric value creation (that has served us so well over the past 100 years) is becoming obsolete. Leaders now need a new frame of reference for value creation. In the emergent economy, competition will center on personalized co‐creation experiences, resulting in value that is truly unique to each individual. The authors see a new frontier in value creation emerging, replete with fresh opportunities. In this new frontier the role of the consumer has changed from isolated to connected, from unaware to informed, from passive to active. As a result, companies can no longer act autonomously, designing products, developing production processes, crafting marketing messages, and controlling sales channels with little or no interference from consumers. Armed with new tools and dissatisfied with available choices, consumers want to interact with firms and thereby co‐create value. The use of interaction as a basis for co‐creation is at the crux of our emerging reality. The co‐creation experience of the consumer becomes the very basis of value. The authors offer a DART model for managing co‐creation of value processes.

Co‐creating value through customers' experiences: the Nike case

Purpose – This case aims to demonstrate how leading firms are learning how to sustain competitive advantage by co‐creating experiences of value with customers.Design/methodology/approach – The shoe company Nike provides a glimpse of the next “best practices” of value co‐creation with customers. By engaging with informed, connected, and networked customers around the globe, Nike has found their shared experiences to be a new source of value.Findings – The paper finds that customers are now informed, connected, networked, and empowered on a scale as never before, thanks to search engines, engagement platforms, the growth of internet‐based interest groups, and widespread high‐bandwidth communication and social interaction technologies. Customers have learned how to use these new tools to make their opinions and ideas heard.Practical implications – A few leading companies like Nike are involving customers in the value creation process by offering Internet sites where they can share their interactions and expe...

Competing through co‐creation: innovation at two companies

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss how two innovative firms – the French telecommunications firm Orange and the California‐based global networking firm Cisco – have gained competitive advantage from using the co‐creative enterprise business concept to generate sustainable growth.Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes in detail the approach at Orange, which is on co‐creating experience environments with customers and industry mavens, and at Cisco, where the focus is on co‐creating the management of risk and reward.Findings – Companies that have learned how to manage the process of creating unique value with customers and other stakeholders have developed engagement programs and processes that enable interactions among all stakeholders everywhere in the system, with the goal of creating greater value by fostering more rewarding or more valuable experiences.Research limitations/implications – Two case examples of innovative practices are presented.Practical implications – Oranges R&D and market...

Offerings as Digitalized Interactive Platforms: A Conceptual Framework and Implications

In an age of digitalized interactions, offerings are no longer “finished” in the traditional sense; creation of value continues by engaging actors (often consumers and their associated social networks) interacting with organizing actors (often firms and their associated organizational ecosystem) in a joint space of interactive system-environments. One can think of the Apple Watch NikePlus (AWNP) offering in which the consumer co-creates valuable experienced outcomes with a mix of applications, touchpoints, and uses, while AWNP and its organizing actors co-create environments with consumers. Actors increasingly find themselves in such a joint enactment of interactional value creation, through offerings as evolving digitalized networked arrangements of artifacts, persons, processes, and interfaces, which the authors refer to as a Digitalized Interactive Platform (DIP). This implies a broader view of value creation—one in which value is created through interactions, versus one where value is simply the exchange of a fixed offering between a firm and its customers. Offerings as DIPs have significant implications for the theory and practice of marketing.