By Marie Taillard and Jerome Couturier

Co-creation strategies in which consumers provide product ideas, services, reviews and other benefits to each other have been well publicised and are behind the success of digital companies such as giffgaff, eBay, Etsy and Zipcar, and not-so-new companies like Lego.

Co-creation is innovative, engaging and fun for consumers and valuable for companies. By contrast most B2B firms remain entrenched in contractual agreements and zero-sum games that seem anything but co-creative. As a B2B marketer, you may wonder whether the benefits of co-creation can also be reaped in a B2B context.

We think they can. Here’s an example: when B2B companies are drawn to each other to build data-driven strategies, the question is not “can co-creation work?” but “how do we make it work?” In the case of a food service manufacturer where it was clear that data had to be shared up and down the value chain, co-creation was the only way to go in order for a new data strategy to succeed and guarantee sustainable superior performance for all.

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