We present a white paper which is the result of a research conducted at RedesignMe B.V. in collaboration with Eindhoven University of Technology and a medium sized service company.

This white paper discusses one of the main results of a study, which was aimed to develop a framework for understanding and managing internal co-creation in an online setting.

A company can create innovative value by enabling interaction and co-development between employees, also called internal co-creation. Implementation of co-creation inside the organization is part of becoming a co-creative organisation where value is created through interaction between employees, customers and partners.

With the process of internal co-creation, a company can benefit from knowledge and ideas that exist within their boundaries. This information and these ideas would otherwise not come to surface. The process reflects one of the main problems addressed in the recent literature on knowledge management. Namely, to find a solution for the way in which organizations can build more effective employee networks within organizations.

Download the entire whitepaper here.

Once in a while we are contacted by students doing research about co-creation communities. Most of the time the question is if they can e-mail our entire community with some questions. Of course we can’t do this. But because we want to promote co-creation research in every way possible we decided to place some of the requests as “call for participation” on Crowdwise. Here is the first.

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Dear Marketing Professionals,

At the moment I am writing my thesis for my Bsc in Marketing at VU University Amsterdam. Right now I arrived at a point where I need to gather enough respondents, which is the reason I am contacting you. My objective is to find the influence of several motivational rewards on the participation of marketing professionals in crowdsourcing communities. To study this subject properly I have conducted a short questionnaire, of which I hope that you could fill it in. The total amount of time will take approximately 3 minutes, offcourse the questionnaire is anonymous and the results will be handled confidentially.

The questionnaire can be found at: http://www.thesistools.com/redesignme

Filling in the questionnaire may take only a short amount of your time but could mean a great deal for me. I therefore sincerely hope you could find some time in your agenda to give your short opinion and to help me out!

Thank you very much in advance. If you have any further questions about this topic or my thesis, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards,

Tim Meuleman
+31-655770622
tim-meuleman@hotmail.com

“The community of RedesignMe is ideally suited for ‘out-of-the box’ thinking. At some point you can’t do this yourself anymore, because you become blind for the obvious.”, says management coach Ferry van der Vliet of F1 INCITEMENT BV who has advised IDEE-Systems on the RedesignMe Challenge.

Co-creation for entrepreneurs

IDEE Systems is one of nine companies in the SME Innovation Top 100 of 2009, who used their co-creation voucher on RedesignMe.com. With the voucher they could present their burning question to a creative community of almost 5000 innovators.
So far, very diverse Challenges have been posted. The community was challenged to create marketing plans, logo designs, gadgets design, improve or refresh products and adjust the layout of a website. In total there were 234 ideas and designs submitted of which 72 have been awarded with a total prize money of € 2250.

As a result of their Challenge, IDEE-Systems immediately went to work with a number of submitted ideas. IDEE-Systems is the inventor of the ‘ITAS’ analysis. ITAS stands for “Idee Tacho Analysis System”. The system shows how much fuel (and therefore less CO2 emissions) a truck driver can save by adjusting his driving style. Thanks to the input and ideas from the community, IDEE-Systems recently created the Green ITAS Awards. This award will be given to the transport company that achieved the biggest CO2 savings by using the ITAS analysis.

Another idea conceived by the community was to create a simulation so that businesses can quickly see what possible savings in fuel costs (liters, and Euros), maintenance and insurance they could achieve, but most of all what their contribution to a cleaner environment will be. Van der Vliet, “The simulation allows us to easily convince customers with the possibilities of the ITAS system. When they hear the numbers and amounts that we show, we usually get the response: “We’d be crazy not to use it!”

Co-creation voucher

In November 2009, the top SME entrepreneurs from the province North Brabant in The Netherlands received a prize from the province. The prize was a co-creation voucher, that could be spent on RedesignMe.com. Together with an innovation consultant this challenge was formulated, after which the RedesignMe community could get started. In the period November 2009 – May 2010 nine companies have used the voucher.

Outcome for fresh input

With two challenges still running and some soon to come online, we can confirm that co-creation is not only suitable for multinationals, but also for SME’s. By asking the right questions, the community of RedesignMe can break through “corporate blindness” and come up with ideas that the SME entrepreneurs had never thought of. Co-creation has proven to be an important component in tomorrow’s innovations.

On June 24, 2010 we will be introducing our new service called RedesignMe Live! Visit http://www.rdmlive.nl to subscribe for the launch party.

Last week we decided to switch our community platform to English only. The reason behind this is that 60% of our community is English speaking. The other 40% is Dutch. Since most Dutch people can read and write English we decided to make this switch. In the end, RedesignMe.com is all about collaboration. Not being able to understand eachother’s posts had a negative effect on collaboration sometimes, despite the fact that we intergrated automatic translation tools.

Enjoy, the new redesignme.com!

Cheers,
Maxim Schram
CEO RedesignMe