Is co-creation over-hyped?

Sheila Keegan counts herself as an advocate of co-creation. But she kicked off a debate at this year’s Research conference when she voiced her irritation at the “faddish and ubiquitous use of the term” and questioned whether the excitement surrounding it is justified. Meanwhile Jeremy Brown of Sense Worldwide has been making his living from co-creation for the past decade, and welcomes the attention it is currently receiving.

We asked the two of them to debate whether co-creation is over-hyped.

YES

Sheila Keegan
Co-founder
Campbell Keegan

 
Co-creation is the new kid on the block – and it has polarised the research industry. Some advocates see it as revolutionising the way we work and dismiss ‘traditional’ research as ineffectual or irrelevant. Critics, meanwhile, claim that co-creation methods can lack research rigour – that they are superficial or poorly structured.

I am a strong advocate of co-creation, but it is not a panacea. I am wary of the hype that risks turning it into hollow marketing jargon, ill-defined and devoid of meaning.

Nonetheless, it is clear that co-creation is important – it is simply how we function as human beings. But at present it lacks a common language and theoretical framework. There is a wealth of applications, but a lack of conceptual clarity. As an industry we need to explore what we mean by co-creation – how it can be understood culturally and socially, and in relation to new scientific thinking. In particular we need to be clearer about how we can maximise its potential and how it can creatively contribute to our strategic thinking.

What do we mean by co-creation? There are at least two (sometimes overlapping) interpretations:

• a cluster of methodologies (often web-based) which involve all or most stakeholders in the co-creation of value, meaning or ideas
• a perspective on the world which views all exploratory or developmental research, by definition, as co-creation. Sociologist Judi Marshall calls this “living life as inquiry”

Methods such as creative workshops, breakthrough events and creative panels have been around for decades, and there is a wealth of guidance on how best to structure and foster creativity in work groups. It is with the development of web-based methodologies that a gulf has opened between exponents of ‘traditional’ vs ‘co-creation’ methodologies.

It is often claimed that online communities can co-create in ways that are qualitatively different from traditional approaches. Certainly technology facilitates exciting opportunities for sharing and developing ideas and connectivity, which can amplify the scope of co-creation. But it is easy to confuse the methodology with the learning and forget that the underlying principles of research still apply. In my view, attention to research structure, analysis and interpretation is needed, whatever the methodology.

Squabbling about the ‘best’ methodology is a waste of time. All research approaches are routes to creating understanding, generating good ideas and formulating appropriate strategies. Different methodologies deliver different perspectives on research issues. We need to choose the ones that are most likely to deliver understanding, regardless of whether these are old, new or recycled. Forecaster Bob Johansen has described this rather nicely as being “methodologically agnostic”.

Ultimately what we sell is good thinking. With our clients (and stakeholders) we create shared understanding, creative direction, the ability to recognise and make sense of ‘data’, to weave plausible and useful stories, to clarify and steer thinking in productive directions. The methodology is a support, not an end point.  

But as well as being a research methodology, co-creation is intrinsic to everyday human interaction. In normal conversation, each utterance or gesture that an individual makes calls forth a particular response from the ‘other’ who, in responding, elicits a further response from the first speaker. Moment by moment, these responses steer the conversation. In this way, most conversations are, in large part, improvisational and co-created.

The same processes occur in a research context. Creating understanding, ideas and knowledge is a moment-by-moment, iterative process involving all of the participants. These are not new thoughts – GH Mead developed his theory of symbolic interactionism in the 1930s. The point I am making is that all good research, by its nature, is improvisational and creative. We need to focus on living life as inquiry and not just concentrate on methodology.

Developing this mindset among researchers, clients and participants fosters a collaborative way of working that is essential for consumer-centred innovation. An example is the development of flat beds by British Airways in the 1990s, cited by Langmaid and Andrews in their book The Breakthrough Zone as a co-created success.

‘Research as co-creation’ requires a new model, in which learning is developed, evaluated and steered moment by moment. We need to continually listen, observe, reflect, evaluate and make judgements all at the same time, shaping and being shaped by others. 

Good research has always demanded a range of skills: thinking from different perspectives, examining our own emotional, intuitive and conditioned responses and those of others. Co-creation is not the holy grail. As a methodology it has strengths and weaknesses, and we need to fully understand and foster the conditions under which it flourishes. ‘Living life as inquiry’ demands a different mindset, which is both improvisational and rigorous.

If we treat co-creation simply as a fashion we risk trivialising and undermining its development in both these areas.

NO

Jeremy Brown
CEO
Sense Worldwide

Co-creation is certainly being hyped at the moment, but in our opinion deservedly so.

At heart, co-creation describes the exciting new ways that social and technological change enables individuals, groups and organisations to connect, collaborate, solve problems and create new value together. It is set to be the key driver of innovation and growth in the early 21st century – the next step in the way business develops and markets new goods, and a major change in the way we as citizens engage with public services and participate in the political process.

While the significance and impact of co-creation stretch far beyond research, its importance to the discipline cannot be overstated. Many of the key skills and processes involved in co-creation have their origins in research, and many of its key practitioners come from a research background. This gives the industry the opportunity to be at the fulcrum of future business and social change, enabling organisations to better engage with and learn from their customers. This is leading to a potential redefinition of research and expansion of its role.

The importance of co-creation has its roots in the fact that top-down systems, whether multinational corporations or governments, have reached a point where they cannot deliver the required value on their own. A fast-moving marketplace means the bar for success is set higher as consumers become more demanding, and the current downturn is squeezing organisations to do more for less.

As a result organisations are opening up and reaching outside themselves for innovation, whether groups of experts to help solve existing problems, or with consumers themselves to help better fit products and services to their individual needs. In some instances these networks are coming together of their own accord and creating solutions that rival anything offered by ‘proper’ companies.

Many people see co-creation’s plethora of definitions and approaches as a weakness, implying faddishness and a lack of rigour. But this fluidity is in fact part of its strength. Co-creation is an emergent, bottom-up activity that has spread organically via virtual and physical networks. It is defined by its practitioners as they explore its potential and evolve its processes. In a networked digital society, knowledge is negotiated in this way rather than being processed and handed down. The robustness of these emergent ideas is determined by their longevity and success rather than by a single source of authority.

This does not mean that top-down organisations or systems of knowledge are redundant. They are the foundation on which co-creation occurs – providing the efficiencies of scale and expertise required to turn co-created ideas into reality. Similarly, the use of co-creation doesn’t mean throwing out traditional research methods. They are the building blocks from which new, more open, flexible and creative methodologies can be built which ensure that insight and real consumer involvement are a continual and iterative part of the business development process.

Co-creation isn’t an easy option. It requires strong, considered leadership and an understanding of when an organisation’s processes can be open to new ideas and influences and when to hunker down and make internally and individually driven decisions. The key often lies in the preparation, carefully constructing the right conditions at each stage for different groups to come together and collaborate meaningfully. At Sense we find that this involves:

• asking the right questions– stimulating participants’ curiosity and imagination through exercises that channel their creativity,
• of the right people – selecting a group with a range of levels of familiarity with the business challenge, to both fuel and temper thinking,
• in the right way – creating an emphatic connection with participants, and ensuring they feel they are making a difference.

Nor is co-creation the answer to everything. I wouldn’t want a major surgical operation to be co-created, but I might want the organisation to take a co-creative approach to deliver a more responsive and relevant service experience. Co-creation helps to construct the right briefs that pinpoint the key issues to be tackled. Its outputs are often a further set of questions – ‘how might we do X?’ for example – that frame an opportunity and set the business challenge that needs to be addressed if real innovation is to occur.

The hype about co-creation is justified and useful if it brings people’s attention to the practice. We’ve been co-creating with our own network of ‘expert creatives’ for ten years now, and from our wealth of experience we have developed guidelines and frameworks that have survived the true test of worth – our clients. They recognise that co-creation produces real value.

Sheila Keegan’s book Qualitative Research is due to be published in October by Kogan Page. Sense’s white paper The Spirit of Co-Creation can be downloaded here.