From Brick and Mortar to Click and Order, the transition in business thinking and opportunity capitalization has been swift and impressive. If that was not enough, the onset of social media revolution is making organizations rethink their business strategies and embrace new ways of interacting with their customers and capitalize on opportunities these interactions present.
Co-create and Offer is an emerging business model that embodies an approach to leverage upon the intellect and wisdom of everyone that matters in creating new ideas, products and services, and offering these (creations) for commercial purposes. The core of this new model is the co-creation capabilities of a large pool of individuals within a particular ecosystem.
Co-create and offer seems to draw its essence from service-dominant logic, where parties engage in an interdependent exchange of benefits to create value for one and another in the process.
Given the wide and varied involvement of individuals and the flexibility the model entails, it is imperative that co-creation efforts should be managed in some way so that they remain result-oriented.
As in the case of fresh water in rivers, if it is not managed effectively and utilized in a timely manner it could ultimately flow into the sea resulting in its possible wastage. The co-creation efforts face a similar dilemma. They need to be managed in some systematic way and enveloped in a structure to achieve the maximum benefits of the wisdom and knowledge available at a wider scale among the communities.
With that in mind, we believe that the Co-create and Offer business model can be operationalized in at least two ways:
- Traditional organizations using Co-create and Offer business model
Organizations are inherently bottom-line driven entities. Therefore, while they are keen on tapping into a larger pool of wisdom to enhance their innovation and organizational capabilities, they also need to ensure that they maximize the value and stay in control of the operationalization and outcome parts of co-creation efforts.
Project management, therefore, can serve as a vehicle to help organizations plan, deploy and benefit from Co-create and offer projects. We discuss some of these possibilities as below.
- Freelance use of Co-create and Offer business model by a pool of individuals forming an organic organization for the venture purposes.
The freelance use of the Co-create and Offer business model would necessitate the formation of an organic and adhoc organization to successfully deploy and execute co-creation projects. Project management being the ad-hoc system of activities has a natural role to play. We discuss some of the possibilities below.
- The loose nature of freelance-based Co-create and Offer organizations would require an understanding of their capacities to deliver. Project management skills will be critical to identify availability and gaps in resources to initiate Co-create and Offer projects in such organizations.
- Project management will provide the necessary adhoc platform to form teams of disparate individuals with matching co-creation to commercialization interests to come together to start the Co-create and Offer project.
- Project management will provide key skills in controlling the project work which will be significant given the fragile team structure of freelance Co-create and Offer projects.
- The project management embodying the knowledge in scope, time, cost, risk, quality, procurement, stakeholder, and communication management will give a head start to Co-create and Offer project teams on initiating projects as they could always fall back any time to use such knowledge or use it as a point of reference for planning, execution and controlling the projects.
Concluding thoughts:
Co-creation is at the centerpiece of the latest business eco-system changes leading to the emergence of a Co-create and Offer business model. The organic nature of teams that involve in Co-create and Offer projects require a system that provides semblance and serves as the foundation platform. Project management knowledge geared at adhoc systems seems natural to provide solutions for the birth and growth of Co-create and Offer projects.
What do you think about the viability of the Co-create and Offer business model?
