We weren’t really sure of the difference either, so we consulted Wikipedia. We learned that co-creation could be seen as creating great work by standing together with those for whom the project is intended. Scholars C K Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy introduced the idea of co-creation in their 2000 Harvard Business Review article, “Co-Opting Customer Competence”. They developed their arguments further in their book The Future of Competition.

Last year, Promise Corporation published the results of a systematic review of co-creation evidence, Co-creation: new pathways to value that was co-produced with LSE Enterprise. In it they attempted to distinguish co-creation from related concepts such as crowdsourcing, mass customisation and mass collaboration by insisting on the psychoanalytical, decision-making as well as innovation roots of the concept in its intellectual evolution. Their new definition of co-creation: “co-creation is an active, creative and social process, based on collaboration between producers and users, that is initiated by the firm to generate value for customers.”

Is there a difference between crowdsourcing, open innovation, mass collaboration and co-creation? We hate to be the ones that let the cat out of the bag, but not really. Some people are more comfortable with one term over another. We think it comes down to who’s book you’ll buy.