Managing your co-creation mix: co-creation ventures in distinctive contexts

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to co-creation theory by integrating conceptual insights from the management and marketing literatures that are both concerned with co-creation phenomena. It aims to develop a reference model for comparing how different organizations organize and manage their co-creation ventures. It also aims to apply the authors' framework to four distinct cases that illustrate the differences in co-creation practice within different co-creation environments. Design/methodology/approach – The authors compare four different companies based on case profiles. Each company is employing its own distinct approach to co-creating. The authors employ a method mix including literature analysis, structured interviews, document and web site analysis, as well as participation. Findings – The reference model offers a set of useful dimensions for case-based inquiry. The case comparisons show how firms may decide to systematise and manage a mix of co-creation activities within B2B versus B2C contexts, utilising either crowd-sourced or non-crowd-sourced approaches. Further, the case comparisons suggest that there are less differences in B2B versus B2C co-creation as compared with crowd-sourced versus non-crowd-sourced approaches. Ultimately, implementation decisions in one dimension of co-creation design (e.g. whom to involve in co-creation) will affect other dimensions of implementation and governance (e.g. how much intimacy) and thus how co-creation needs to be managed. Originality/value – The paper presents case comparisons utilising B2B versus B2C, as well as crowd versus non-crowd-sourcing examples of co-creation and an original decision support framework for assessing and comparing co-creation choices.