Co-creation: why it gives you a shortcut to success when you want to innovate or create your new startup

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Today I decided to talk about co-creation. This is something we hear more and more... but still, when we read the post mortel of some startups that get burst, we can see that most of them failed in their innovation because their product did not fit with the market needs. 

Quick analysis of Segway
We can take the example of Segway. Fun product, initially designed to be used in our day to day life. The inventor - Dean Kamen - talked about it as the new transport mode that will change our life. The product still exists but is used only in niche market... And clearly the reason of this failure was that the Segway was not designed with the futur users. They designed it secretly and did not realise that the product does not fit with our exceptations. Some of the reasons: it is not practical to use it during the winter and actually people prefer to walk for short rides. Clearly if they designed  and co-create the product with the end user, they would have identified those problems from the beginning. 

How co-creation will benefit to your business

Co-creation is definitely the best way to insure that your innovation will answer to the market demands, especially if you are a small startup. Some of the reasons why it will help you to succeed: 

  • Long term time saving: A lot will say that co-creation makes product creation longer.  On my point of view, it will save you a  lot of time: the time you did not spent to create the wrong product. When you create alone you will eventually discover at the end there is no market for your product or that you need to restart from zero. Co-creation will help you to validate your business idea.
  • Motivation: it is a bit like the donkey and the carotte: Co-creation will also help you to go faster on the market. When you start to involve companies in your project, you have no choice but work and that is the key to success, isn't it? 
  • Customer satisfaction: the tailoring is something that is coming back. the market is tired by automation and standardisation. They want something personalised. By co-creating with you, they will feel like the product was tailored to fit to their needs.  
  • Better awareness: If you work alone, you will be able to talk about your project to your network only. If you co-create, your customers will talk about your product almost like if it was theirs as well. The word of month will be much much better.


What it will cost to you?

  • Self-esteem: The first hard thing when you are creating a startup is that you come with an idea and you think you know how to answer to a problem with your business idea. The initial idea may be great but the best person to tell you if you are right or wrong is the end user. Co-creation will cost you a bit (a lot) of your self esteem as you will need to pivote and accept you are wrong on certain elements. Unless you accept to be wrong and unless you are prepared to pivote to a direction that you did not imagine, you will fail.
  • Talking about your project earlier: A lot of entrepreneurs don't talk about their project until they go live. They are so worried that someone else will steal their ideas that they do prefer to isolate themselves in their adventure. Eventually they discover that dispute all the precaution they took, someone else thought about the same thing. If you want to co-create, you need to forget that and you need to talk about your ideas as soon as you can... In the reality this is not that bad. I think that if a company wants to replicate your idea, they will do it anyway. So don't be worried about that and focus on trying to be the best in your market and for the segmentation you target. 
  • Short term time killer: In a short time, co-creation will make you spend more time than if you do not. First of all you will need to find the co-creators. Prospecting is never free. Then you will need to take the time to listen to them. But this is a short term issue and in a longer term perspective you will save more time than you will spend. 

How we have started implementing co-creation for All Made In France:

The first stage of co-creation is to find the people that want to co-create with you. Few weeks ago, I talked about All Made In France and the first landing page we created to talk about our project. One the reasons why we did this landing page was to share our idea and find people that may be interested by our concept. We know that if we are not able to attract sellers and buyers via this landing page, it will be hard to attract them later. 
In the landing page we put all the details of the concept and then call the readers to action by asking them to contact us if they are finding our idea interesting. Our conversion rate (number of people that contacted us VS number of readers) for the moment is 2% which is good, knowing that we did not make any advertisement yet and did not spread it to our network yet. 

We are still right at the beginning for this project but I will share you all the details as we progress. 


If you have a great business idea, do not hesitate to take the direction of the co-creation. This is applicable in any type of business (good or services) and I can insure you, it will make the difference. 









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