Daily Archives: June 24, 2008

The McKinsey Quarterly looks at the emerging nature of collaboration and the challenges for organizations as they make try to make sense of it all. I personally think that the model cannot be replicated in toto. Trying to make a Wikipedia for organizations is not possible unless they relinquish control. And that is not going to happen. More from the article:

The example of Wikipedia suggests that companies can take even greater advantage of specialization by ceding more control over decisions about the content of products to networks of participants (suppliers, customers, or both) who interact with one another. Does this seem far-fetched? IBM apparently doesn’t think so: it has adopted the open operating system Linux for some of its computer products and systems, drawing on a core code base that is continually improved and enhanced by a massive global community of software developers, only a small fraction of whom work for IBM. In software, open-source packages are gaining such favor that they are cutting into profit margins and drawing market share from proprietary software brands.

Many other examples of cocreation are now under way. One of them, participatory marketing, which encourages customers to help create marketing campaigns, is sometimes more than just a new tactic to attract attention. Approached in the right way, it is also an opportunity to start cocreating products with them. Last year, for instance, Peugeot invited people to submit car designs online and attracted four million page views on its site. The company built a demonstration model of the winning design to exhibit at automotive marketing events and partnered with software developers to get it included in a video game. Even business-to-business companies are starting to cocreate with customers: corporate users of SugarCRM’s customer-relationship-management software customize it to meet the specific needs of their industries.

Companies have three ways to win by adopting distributed cocreation. First, they can capture value from the cocreated product or service itself, as LEGO and Threadless have, by merchandising good ideas gleaned from the network. (In South Korea, the cocreated cosmetic brand Missha has seized a 40 percent market share in its segment.) Second, companies can capture value by providing a complementary product or service. Red Hat, for instance, sells a host of technology services to users of Linux. Third, they can benefit indirectly from the cocreation process—for example, through an enhanced brand or strategic position.