co-creation
Creative acts that involve more than one person or organization. For the BoP, co-creation describes the act of outside businesses partnering with local groups in the BoP in order to innovate new business models and create new markets.
Simply put, co-creation refers to creative acts that involve more than one person or organization. In business marketing terms, co-creation is often defined as the direct and active involvement of end users in the design of products and services. One powerful example of co-creation is the open source software movement, where development of software is open, distributed, and often involves both users and the original developers. For the BoP, co-creation has been used by Stuart Hart et al. to describe the act of outside businesses partnering with local groups in the BoP in order to innovate new business models and create new markets.
A prime example of this is the Base of the Pyramid Protocol, “a model for business co-creation that marries MNCs’ resources, technologies and best practices with those of the community.” Companies like SC Johnson and Solae (a subsidiary of DuPont) have used the Protocol to help them build partnerships with groups in poor communities, in order to co-create new businesses with those partners. At the heart of BoP co-creation are the twin concepts of mutual value creation – benefit is created for all stakeholders, in terms important to each – and interdependency - addressing the needs of all parties by drawing on the strengths of all parties.
