Co-creation in Social Media Platforms: End-users as Innovation

Partners

Online Co-innovation within the Open Discovery Space

Wouter Vollenbroek

, Efthymios Constantinides

and Sjoerd de Vries

Department of Media, Communication & Organisation, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

School of Management and Governance, 7522 NB, Drienerlolaan 5, Enschede, The Netherlands

Keywords: Open Discovery Space, Social Media, Innovation, Co-creation, Online Co-innovation, Knowledge Media.

Abstract: Innovation is a way of meeting changing public needs by developing new and better solutions; it is also one

of the most extensively discussed issues in the academic literature and field practice. Changing students’

behaviour, increasing knowledge development, increasing parents’ involvement and new teaching methods

that overtake the existing methods creates a certain necessity to develop new knowledge media in

collaboration with all educational stakeholders. Under increasing competition and market pressure the

innovation process has been subject to important transformation during the last 30 years. Educational

publishers changed from being traditionally a “closed’, internal process, based on internal organisational

expertise and structures (R&D, New Product Department, New product Management etc.) the innovation

process is increasingly becoming externally oriented. Chesbrough (2003) popularized the trend of

externalizing the innovation process by engaging innovation partners in what he called the Open Innovation

model. With the explosion of the social media and the subsequent public empowerment the innovation

process is becoming a domain where the end-users and stakeholders are often directly involved (Prahalad

and Ramaswamy, 2004); Crowdsourcing and innovation with the end-users and stakeholders is becoming

the new innovation norm after closed- and open innovation. In this paper we identify this trend as Online

Co-Innovation and explain its main merits in relation to the implementation of the Open Discovery Space

project in the Netherlands.

1 INTRODUCTION

Innovation has been always praised as a means of

creating and maintaining competitive advantages

and is a basic requirement for becoming successful.

The development of new innovative knowledge

media now no longer depends of the professionals

within a publishing company, but requires new

innovation methods with an essential role for end-

users and stakeholders. The Knowledge Media

Institute (n.d.) defines knowledge media as “the

processes of generating, understanding and sharing

knowledge using several different media, as well as

understanding how the use of different media shapes

these processes”. The publisher has thereby no

longer a fixed role as publisher; this role will also be

assigned to the end-users (i.e. students and teachers)

and stakeholders (i.e. parents) of the knowledge

media. The fact that co-innovation enables students,

teachers and parents to participate in the production

process of a product that fits their individual needs

leads to the assumption that they rather choose that

product, than the standard products. Franke and

Piller (2004), Schreier (2006) and Grissemann and

Stokburger-Sauer (2012) provide empirical evidence

of a higher willingness to pay for products that are

self-designed than for standardized products. One of

the main reasons is according to Franke and Piller

(2004) the fact that the new products are created

with a higher preference fit of the stakeholders, than

the standardized products. The new product

development process has become an area of focus

for many academics and businesses (Leonard-

Barton, 1992; Olson et al, 1995). Many businesses

and branches give innovation a central place in their

mission and market positioning. In the marketing

literature the innovation is usually treated as an

essential strategic choice and basis of competitive

advantage (Kärkkäinen et al, 2010). In an

381

Vollenbroek W., Constantinides E. and De Vries S..

Co-creation in Social Media Platforms: End-users as Innovation Partners - Online Co-innovation within the Open Discovery Space.

DOI: 10.5220/0004398003810385

In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST-2013), pages 381-385

ISBN: 978-989-8565-54-9

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

educational setting it is more a way of fulfilling the

needs of the stakeholders. Changing students’

behavior, increasing knowledge development,

increasing parents’ involvement and new teaching

methods that overtake the existing methods creates a

certain necessity to develop new knowledge media

in collaboration with all educational stakeholders. It

can be seen as the new paradigm after the closed-

and open innovation versions. The European

research project ‘Open Discovery Space’ is one of

the first examples of an educational platform that is

mainly focused on co-innovating new knowledge

media and disseminating these media within

European educational institutions. We are

responsible for the implementation of ODS in the

Netherlands. Within the Netherlands we apply co-

innovation as an ODS-implementation strategy. This

paper describes the concept ‘online co-innovation’,

his merits and his role in educational settings.

2 INNOVATION PROCESSES

Looking to the development of the innovation

concept over de last 100 years we can identify two

main innovation models: closed innovation model

and open innovation model (Chesbrough, 2003).

2.1 Closed Innovation Model

This approach is the oldest one and has been the

dominant business attitude to innovation the largest

part of the 21

century. The closed innovation model

within an educational setting consists of a new

product development process that is based on

subsequent development steps (idea generation, idea

screening, prototyping, business feasibility, financial

analysis, marketing planning, production, market

testing, and market introduction).

These steps are consequently followed by new

product development project teams or new product

departments, in deep secrecy for competitive

reasons. The new product development process is

therefore internal and requires the presence of clear

organizational structures (new product department,

new product managers, new product project teams

etc.).

The backbone is usually the R&D department

and the origin of many of these innovations is based

on technology developments. Businesses engaged in

this type of innovation often develop all necessary

know-how and technologies required internally or

often acquire firms having already developed or

patented such technologies. The degree of end-user

and stakeholder participation in the process depends

on the degree of end-user orientation of the firm;

typically this was limited to a few stages of the

process cycle like the idea generation, prototype

evaluation and market testing). End-users and

stakeholders were in such cases guided, strictly

regulated and limited. Secrecy is after all one of the

foundations of this type of innovation.

The main disadvantages of the closed innovation

are the high innovation costs and the long time-to-

market, high development costs and high failure

rates of new products.

2.2 Open Innovation Model

In the beginning of the 90s some new ideas on

innovation processes domain begun surfacing. The

end-users’ and stakeholders’ pressure for faster

innovation, high failure rates of new products, long

time-to-market trajectories, increasing innovation

costs and the fast technological change put

producers of products and services under pressure to

change their innovation tactics; efficient, faster and

cheaper innovation methods became the focus of

businesses and academia. Kambil, Frissen and

Sundaram (1999), Chesbrough (2003), von Hippel

(2005) and others put forward the idea of innovating

in networks: create networks of supply chain

partners, sometimes including even competitors, and

develop innovations created through collaboration.

The most obvious place to look for such partners

was of course the supply chain (suppliers,

middlemen, retailers) but also areas where necessary

technological or commercial expertise was present.

Many such partners, being much closer to the end-

user and stakeholder and the market could contribute

better ideas and help avoiding costly mistakes.

Next to such vertical collaborations that were

focused on efficiency, also horizontal collaborations

became popular in the 90s. Collaboratively

developed products like the Senseo coffee machine

(developed by Philips and the coffee maker

DouweEgberts) or the home draft beer device

Beertender (Developed by Heineken and Krups)

were some successful early examples of such

collaborative efforts.

In both vertical and horizontal innovation

ventures a basic issue was always the need for

openness and sharing of knowledge. This issue has

been a difficult one and it is still an issue today.

Open innovation helped businesses to become more

efficient, more innovative and reduced costs and

product development time. It also forced firms to

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become more transparent and open to the idea of

sharing financial risks.

2.2.1 Online Co-innovation

Recent developments in the area of web

technologies have placed the end-user and

stakeholders of a product or service on an extra

powerful position. The Internet technology induced

the first wave of market power migration providing

consumers with unlimited information, many

alternatives and easy transactions (Urban and Com,

2005). The increasing influence of these individuals

created a new form of open innovation: the online

co-innovation. Online co-innovation is a form of

open innovation whereby end-users and other

stakeholders of products or services, within the

social media, explicitly involve and with a shared

leadership participate in the development of

innovative products or services.

This form of cooperative innovation has three

important characteristics that make them different to

closed and open innovation: (1) explicit commitment

of end-users and stakeholders of products and

services, (2) equivalent positions of these

individuals, and (3) shared leadership of these

individuals.

Around the mid of the first decade of the 21

century new Internet applications often referred to as

Web 2.0 or Social Media provided people with even

more power: the end-users and stakeholders of

products or services were not anymore the passive

receiver of business generated marketing content but

had for the first time in history the option to create

and consume peer-generated marketing content.

Such new content in the form of product reviews,

product advices, recommendations or product

advocacy reduced dramatically the customer’s

dependence on location shopping and marketing

information provided by the producer. The social

media phenomenon, next to important psychological

and social effects, has brought about a new

generation of empowerment and smart consumers

(Constantinides and Fountain, 2007).

Such consumers demand a greater and more

substantial contribution to the innovation process;

they favor products and services customized to their

specific needs and taste and they are also willing to

have a voice or even actively participate in the

innovation process, usually without any direct

financial incentives. A number of businesses have

already realized that harnessing the crowd creativity

and wisdom is a new way of innovating.

Forums, bulletin boards, blogs, online social

networks, living labs and online communities are

some of the social media tools used to harness the

creativity of end-users and stakeholders of certain

products or services. Within these platforms the

individuals have the opportunity to participate and

interfere in one or all the development phases (idea

generation, idea screening, concept testing,

development, and launch) of Crawford and Di

Benedetto (2003). This creates an important position

for the individuals, because they have a large share

in the final decision processes in these development

phases. In case of ODS students, teachers and

parents collaboratively create and improve

knowledge media that will be tested in the crowd

within European educational institutions in all

educational levels.

The way of working – done by ODS – is also

increasingly taking part in other situations, because

that allows organizations to improve the personal

experiences around their products and services. A

way to fulfill this goal is by offering a specific

customer at a specific time, on a specific place and

in a certain context a wished product or service

(Romero & Molina, 2011). A successful innovation

is for that reason not only the development of new

products, but also enhance the satisfaction and

respond to the new demands on quality, quantity,

and transparency with regard to the origin of raw

materials (suppliers), timeliness (logistics and

distribution) and the availability of the product

(Omta, 2002).

In some cases the input of the crowd is so rich

and abundant that businesses do not see any more

need to innovate in house. Lego, Dell computers,

Starbucks and Toyota are some of the many

examples of firms having fully integrated the final

consumer into their innovation process. The idea is

that traditional publishing companies of educational

knowledge media also change the closed innovation

process they currently use, in a collaborative

innovation process where stakeholders can

participate in the role of publisher. The knowledge

of the crowd is bigger than the knowledge of one

individual within a publishing company of

knowledge media. In the new situation, publishers

have not ‘a monopoly position’ in the development

of knowledge media, students, teachers, parents and

other stakeholders has a large influence in the

development process. Within the online co-

innovation paradigm we introduce two basic forms

of ‘innovators’:

 The Amateur Innovator: these are end users

or stakeholders of products and services

Co-creationinSocialMediaPlatforms:End-usersasInnovationPartners-OnlineCo-innovationwithintheOpen

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willing to give away time and energy helping

businesses with ideas, recommendations or

even product testing in exchange of almost

nothing. Often such amateur product

developers become brand or product

advocates by sharing their (i.e. educational)

experiences in their social networks. While the

motives of these people are at the moment an

issue of research the fact of the matter is that a

large pool of global talent is available to

businesses for free.

 The Professional Innovator: these are

usually specialists (can be end-users or

stakeholders) who in their free time are

working in solving technical or management

problems at a fee. These are for example the

e-mature teachers within an educational

institution. ODS bring together this global

talent within professional development

schools network by creating an educational e-

learning platform where students, teachers and

parents can collaboratively create and improve

knowledge media. Many businesses in other

markets make already use of this global talent

pool in solving problems by addressing the

crowd wisdom; in this case a fee is paid but

usually this fee is much lower than the cost of

the product.

We propose that online co-innovation is

becoming the new mantra of the new product and

service development in educational settings. While

extensive research must be still done many

companies are positive or even enthusiastic about it.

In the Netherlands, businesses are still skeptical

about this phenomenon; fear of the unknown and

fear of becoming too transparent seem to stay on the

way (Social Media Monitor, 2012). However

businesses do not need to worry much about

revealing secrets; we live already in the era of

openness and full transparency. The advent of social

media has raised the secrecies surrounding new

ideas. Since these ideas are quickly spread within the

social media.

3 CONCLUSIONS

Online co-innovation implies opening the doors to

end-users and stakeholders of products and services,

and evolves them into online co-innovation partners.

Due to the growth of social media, this is a

logical step for educational publishing companies to

become successful in the 21th century. They have to

listen to the voice of the end-users and stakeholders

all the way. We assume that using a co-innovation

approach to prepare students, teachers and parents of

the capabilities and value of ODS, will improve the

final implementation process of the Open Discovery

Space Platform. We expect that this is because the

students, teachers and parents feel that they will get

involved in the design process of knowledge media.

Educational learning networks with students,

teachers, parents and other educational stakeholders

in the ODS-project are some of the valuable

examples for these publishing companies to improve

the development of knowledge media. The fear of

becoming too visible is realistic but beyond the

point. The openness of the Internet, the social media

revolution and the subsequent end-users and

stakeholders empowerment has led, to a new form of

transparency and end-users and stakeholders’

engagement. The task of the publisher is to find

ways to turn this potential threat to opportunity. The

students, teachers and parents want to have their

voice heard and the publisher should do their best to

reach them and harness their creativity, knowledge,

experiences and willingness to help. An optimal fit

between the needs of the individuals and the

publishing company creates broadly accepted and

adopted knowledge media.

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