Editor’s letter

Citation

Randall, R.M. (2013), "Editor’s letter", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 41 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-08-2013-0064

Editor’s letter

Article Type: Editor’s letter From: Strategy & Leadership, Volume 41, Issue 6

This special issue of Strategy & Leadership looks both backward and forward at "The value co-creation revolution." We are now in the middle of an era when companies compete to give customers what they want, where, how, when and with whom they want it. Call it the creative economy, the social media marketing revolution or stakeholder value innovation, it’s happening all around us. So this issue looks forward at how customers are engaging with leading companies to enrich the experience of developing and using products and services, and how these engagement platforms are fostering innovation and in some cases evolving into new businesses units.

But the issue also looks backward to a landmark in the value revolution some ten years ago when the late C.K. Prahalad and his co-author Venkat Ramaswamy introduced readers to the "co-creation of value with customers" paradigm. At that time many observers thought that concepts like mass customization and experiential marketing offered the ultimate in customer value. Over the decade, the internet and other engagement platforms where stakeholders from around the world can interact to contribute their insights and experience to the design of products and services have made co-creation of value with customers a new arena of competition and in the process are changing the economics of innovation.

As Prof Ramaswamy and his co-author, Kerimcan Ozcan, explain in their article "Strategy and co-creation thinking," leading firms now deal with consumer communities that are organized around a common passion. Such committed consumers want to influence how they will be served and therefore want to be involved in the activities typically thought of as internal to the firm, such as access to resources and the value creation process. Thus the process of value creation shifts away from a firm-and-product-centric approach to a stakeholding-individual and experience-based-competence perspective.

But the game changer is that the sources of competence available to managers now have expanded to include the collective intelligence in the whole global system – with the ability to rapidly source and access talent, expertise, knowledge and skills from anywhere in the world anytime. As Ramaswamy and Ozcan note, this new paradigm of co-creation of value with customers can be distilled to: Joint Aspirations > Joint Resources.

Other insights in this issue on the value co-creation revolution include:

"Venkat Ramaswamy: a ten-year perspective on how the value co-creation revolution is transforming competition." Brian Leavy’s interview with Prof. Ramaswamy covers the basic elements of the co-creation playbook and what executives need to know about what makes this perspective different and powerful.

Stephen Denning offers an overview of how the imperative of continuous innovation is changing the business environment in "Ten drivers of radical management in the ‘creative economy.’" Successful businesses will respond with a paradigm shift in their leadership and management perspective from product-centric to customer-stakeholder centric.

"Extreme trust: the new competitive advantage." Don Peppers and Martha Rogers explain how leading companies are learning to achieve competitive advantage by building IT systems and establishing cultural norms to protect each customer’s interest proactively. Called "extreme trust," this approach produces value for customers and strengthens their relationship with the company.

"How CEOs, CIOs and CMOs see the technology future of corporate openness, customer individualization and innovation partnerships." IBM consultants Linda Ban and Anthony Marshall have produced a meta-analysis of interviews about the future of business, innovation, customer interactions and technology with thousands of private and public sector leaders. They found opportunities for C-suite executives to leverage new technologies to manage openness across the organization, individualize customer relationships and invest in the partnership ecosystem for innovation.

And for advice on how to take the reins of a new leadership opportunity – startup, turnaround, sustain success, accelerate growth or realignment – don’t miss:

"Avoiding onboarding and promotion traps." Michael Watkins shows leaders taking on a new job how to design and follow a comprehensive strategic framework for making transitions, one that distills the experience of many leaders facing a diverse range of situations.

Good reading!

Robert M. Randall
Editor