ExperienceCurve by Karl Long

I believe that companies that co-create value with their customers will continue to win big in the marketplace, but anyone who wants to embark upon co-creating value with customers will have to focus on design of the customers experience. Co-creation with the customer is dependent upon participation of the customer through all the touch points your company has including web, phone, IVR, environments, people etc. and all those touch points must be “well designed.” You can’t make customers participate and create value with you company, they must be enabled and motivated. Companies must stop thinking about customers as passive consumers and understand that customers are valuable members of that companies value network and many of that customers peripheral actions around a purchase can be as valuable than the purchase itself. It’s a new way of thinking about lifetime value, not just the sum of the purchases a customer might make over their lifetime, but their contribution to the intellectual capital of a company, a companies know how, and the companies value to the marketplace.

Now it���s all very well saying design is the key to helping a company co-create value with it���s customers, it is IMHO the enabler, but there must be a strategic intent in the organization to use and value what customers can bring to the table.

Here’s another great article from Business Week on the topic of the barriers to design creativity in traditional organizations. I am also pleased to see that it was written by the Dean of Rotman School of Management, maybe there is hope that some of future MBA’s will come out with a modicum of design sensitivity, and not just be another quant
Creativity That Goes Deep