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Scholars have affirmed that a conceptualization of value co-creation in business relationships should reflect the nature and characteristics of interactional processes that occur in use. The advent of sales and marketing technologies, however, is changing the nature and dynamics of interactions. New trends in digitalization have played a significant role in emphasizing and facilitating the occurrence of business-to- business (B2B) collaborative or sharing economy. The B2B sharing economy and value co-creation are closely intertwined, as businesses harness the power of shared resources and collaboration to generate value in diverse ways. This study highlights the importance of going beyond value co-creation in studying B2B collaborative economy, unpacking the interconnected value processes that influence value co-creation. It also aims at showing the activities that characterize multiple joint value spheres among actors.

The study consists of 49 qualitative interviews with managers operating in different industries.

The paper shows that when considering digital B2B contexts, five joint value spheres in business relationships should be considered: a value co-creation, a value appropriation, a value communication, a value measurement and a value representation sphere. Each one is characterized by specific activities that are relevant from a managerial point of view.

This study highlights that value co-creation has often been over stressed when discussing business interactions, also with the advent of new technologies. Rather, this study offers a more comprehensive view of value co-creation that includes different value processes occurring in joint value spheres. These further processes are relevant because failure and success in business relationships within the B2B sharing economy are often dependent from activities outside the value co-creation process, which strongly affect it. Such knowledge will also open up new research venues and opportunities to better contribute to the practice of value management in business relationships.

This study aims to develop our understanding of the value co-creation process in business networks. This study identifies four key sub-processes that characterize the value co-creation journey as it unfolds across an inter-organizational network. These four sub-processes are opportunity co-creation, solution co-creation, complementary co-creation and activated co-creation.

Reflecting the exploratory nature of this research, the methodology relies on an in-depth case study, which is analyzed through the lens of the resource interaction occurring within the specific business relationships and collaborative episodes that affected the nine-year long development of Deko, a new architectural lighting solution.

The main contribution of the paper is identifying the sub-processes comprising the value co-creation journey of a technology development solution based on resource combining, re-combining and un-combining across a business network. That value co-creation occurs through a time-consuming journey requiring multiple episodes of collaboration can also inspire the practice of handling this process for instance for a small business such as the one featured in this case study.

This paper highlights that the value co-creation journey process has the potential to frame the unfolding of collaboration in practice for a small business.

The purpose of this paper is to study the organizational processes in co-creation with multiple stakeholders within the scope of innovation networks. It consists of analyzing the necessary adaptation of organizational processes and to structure a proposal of an integrated process.

This paper is a review article, an analysis of relevant articles in the areas of co-creation with multiple stakeholders, innovation networks, dynamic capabilities and organizational aspects linked to network organization which reflect on the main differences by relating them to the relevant literature.

Identification of related processes: Innovation development, knowledge integration/sharing, Co-evolution, Value Co-creation, Value Capture, Stakeholders capabilities, and elements of an integrated process in an innovation network.

Proposition of an integrated co-creation process with multiple stakeholders in an innovation network based on dynamic capabilities with the elements of literature and an analysis of the model variables. This process makes it possible, before reconfiguring the network itself, to create and to define the Project in an integrated manner. They also promote an evolution in the commitment, in the relationship and in the sharing of knowledge among the stakeholders and in the anticipation and evaluation by the stakeholders.

The aim was to identify the competencies professionals need to promote co-creation engagement within communities.

Co-creation could contribute to building community capacity to promote health. Professional development is key to support co-creative practices. Participants were professionals in a position to promote co-creation processes in health-promoting welfare settings across Denmark, Portugal, France and United Kingdom. An overarching unstructured topic guide was used within interviews, focus groups, questionnaires and creative activities.

The need to develop competencies to promote co-creation was high across all countries. Creating a common understanding of co-creation and the processes involved to increase inclusivity, engagement and shared understanding was also necessary. Competencies included: How to run co-creation from the beginning of the process right through to evaluation, using feedback and communication throughout using an open action-oriented approach; initiating a perspective change and committing to the transformation of co-creation into a real-life process.

Overall, learning about underlying principles, process initiation, implementation and facilitation of co-creation were areas identified to be included within a co-creation training programme. This can be applied through the framework of enabling change, advocating for co-creative processes, mediating through partnership, communication, leadership, assessment, planning, implementation, evaluation and research, ethical values and knowledge of co-creative processes.

This study provides novel findings on the competencies needed for health promoting professionals to embed co-creative processes within their practice, and the key concerns that professionals with a position to mediate co-creation have in transferring the abstract term of co-creation into a real-world practice.

This paper aims to explore how value co-creation processes can influence the generation of dynamic capabilities and the retention of industrial customers. The authors explore this influence with the support of social exchange theory and resource-based view.

The methodology applied was qualitative research, based on 29 semi-structured in-depth interviews with owners, managing directors and technical managers with previous experience in co-creation processes. The research was performed in four different European countries and is focused on the mobile crane industry.

The findings suggest that co-creation processes promote the generation of dynamic capabilities linked to adaptation, knowledge, innovation and relationship management. In addition, the closer contact with customers and the availability of their expertise favour the development of solutions that better meet their needs, bridging the cognitive gap which often exists between partners. Regarding customer retention, the results show that co-creation processes foster customer predisposition to buy and cross-sell.

Although value co-creation is a topical subject, research in industrial marketing literature analysing the effects of co-creation processes has been scarce up to now. This paper aims to contribute to the debate by analysing how the co-creation of value can influence the generation of dynamic capabilities in companies and how it affects the retention of industrial customers. Based on social exchange theory and dynamic capabilities, the researchers have been able to address how value is developed and its influence in customer retention proxies.

This paper aims to highlight four features of value co-creation among actors in a business-to-business environment. Service-dominant (S-D) logic of marketing is used as a theoretical lens to view at the process of value co-creation.

Using an interpretive methodological approach, the authors collected empirical material from a single case based in New Zealand. The case was based on the collaboration, interaction and relationship between vendor and client during an information and communication technology (ICT) systems integration project. The unit of analysis was “points of value creation.” Empirical material came from observation, in-depth interviews and documents such as meeting notes and email logs. Interpretation highlighted four features of the value co-creation process: motivators, outcomes, disadvantages and management. Moreover, personal and network aspects of value co-creation process emerged.

The findings of this study capture benefits, as well as conflicts and frustrations, in a value co-creation process. Furthermore, it provides future research motivations for researchers currently working to develop S-D logic of marketing.

It is suggested that there is relatively little direction on how value co-creation process should be undertaken in different contexts such as retail, education, health care and ICT. There is a need to understand the dynamics and specification of value co-creation process, as the literature is scarce in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate value co-creation processes from the focal dyad of the patient and the physician and how their experiences in the consulting room affect the value that is created.

Semi-structured interviews incorporating the critical incident technique (CIT) were conducted with 8 doctors and 24 outpatients in selected hospitals in Ghana, exploring their experiences during their encounter in the service delivery impacting on the value creating healthcare opportunities. An abductive and thematic analytical approach was used to identify 76 useable critical incidents that had clear consequences on both the outcome of the service and the service experiences of the patient.

The study reveals three critical areas needed to support the value co-creation process and respective elements or activities to be considered during the service encounter. The critical areas comprise of the social context, beliefs and perceptions, and partnership between the focal dyad. The findings also suggests that patients do not consider “getting well” as the only value that they seek, but also the total experiences they go through in the consulting room. Also some physicians find it difficult to accept the recent changes in the patients’ behaviour and attitudes, resulting in knowledge conflict that adversely affects actors’ experiences in the consulting room.

The study considered only one of the many professionals in the healthcare delivery, which may affect the true value perceptions of the patient.

The study provides service providers understanding of the processes that influence the patients’ experiences and value creation and the changing trends in the patient’s attitudes. The findings suggest a need for providers to take a holistic view of the service delivery and consider the critical areas, which could impact on the overall service outcomes.

This study extends the research on CIT to exploring the value co-creating processes in the healthcare setting. This also provides clarity in understanding the interdependence of the two actors and how this is managed as a resource in the value co-creation process at the micro level.

The purpose of this paper is to frame innovation as a process of co‐creation according to a practice‐based view.

The paper focuses on the innovation practices that occurred within the web contexts of ten companies. In accordance with netnography research, data include preliminary studies of the web‐based context, naturalistic observations of the community and the activities of its members, and direct interactions with the members of the innovating community.

This work proposes the integration of innovation, practice and the emerging co‐creation research. The paper develops the five “Co‐s” model including: co‐ideation, co‐valuation, co‐design, co‐test and co‐launch. Each “Co‐“ represents a phase of the innovation process resulting from dynamic and on‐going interactions among resources, actions, and a group of actors who are interrelated via a dense network. Within each “Co‐“, the authors identify practices and elements of practices.

A firm's managers should influence co‐creation opportunities by contributing to script practices. These managers should be able to consider more clearly the full options of co‐creation activities and be involved in designing and responding to co‐creation initiatives. They should also understand that each phase could provide an opportunity for collaboration that enhances the value of co‐creation. In this manner, managers could orchestrate multiple resources (e.g., actors, actions tools and output language).

This work brings innovation into the realm of practice by moving the focus from the outcome to the process –, i.e. from innovation as a new artefact to the act of innovating. In this context, innovating is the system of on‐going co‐creation practices performed by people who merge knowledge, actions, tools, languages and artefacts to create something new and better. In this view, innovators are carriers of practices.

Many firms use customer co-creation practices with the aim of benefiting from their customers’ knowledge, skills and resources. This paper aims to explore co-creation processes which involve users with different background characteristics and motivational drivers.

The study builds on an analysis of data from six teams in which users collaborated with in-house professionals for the development of new service concepts. Observations and open-ended questionnaires provided insights into the teams’ development processes. Independent experts rated the generated concepts. The data were analysed using cross-comparison matrices.

The findings suggest that the co-creation process and outcomes can be influenced by numerous intra-team factors, including relationship and task conflicts, participation style, team bonding, team identity and cohesiveness and intra-team collaboration. Their occurrence and influence seem to be linked with a specific team composition. A conceptual co-creation process model and six propositions are used to describe the complex relationships between team composition, intra-team factors and key innovation outcomes.

Research that investigates user involvement in teams needs to consider the complexity of intra-team factors affecting the development process and outcomes. The findings are limited to a specific setting, design task and user sample. Future research should replicate this study in different sectors.

Key to customer co-creation is the systematic recruitment of users based on their background characteristics and motivational drivers. For instance, the involvement of users with very specific innovation-related benefit expectations can cause conflict, leading to narrowly focused outcomes. This, however, can be mitigated by the form of facilitation and roles adopted by in-house professionals. Understanding intra-team dynamics can allow the firm to assemble and facilitate customer co-creation so that generated outcomes can align with set innovation targets.

This paper provides original insights into the “black box” of the customer co-creation process and the complex relationship between team composition, intra-team factors and key innovation outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China leverage their strengths to engage stakeholders in knowledge co-creation processes and get mutual benefit via knowledge-based view (KBV).

Based on KBV, the authors conduct a multiple-case study of five SMEs in China to embrace the knowledge co-creation practice using semi-structured interview, organizational documents and onsite observation.

This study highlights how SMEs leverage their strengths to engage stakeholder to co-create knowledge and practice for the better capturing and utilization of external and internal knowledge. The authors identify three processes of knowledge co-creation for SMEs based on knowledge sharing, knowledge integration and knowledge application in the B2B context. This study finds that SMEs engage their stakeholders in knowledge sharing by building and maintaining trust. The knowledge integration process was driven by the owner’s openness. Mutual learning facilitates the knowledge application process of SMEs.

This study relies on a limited number of case studies and considers only firms’ perspective to analyze the SMEs co-create knowledge with their stakeholders. Further studies could examine the challenge of knowledge co-creation in multiple stakeholders’ relationships in B2B contexts, i.e. in relation to product and service innovation with complexity and uncertainly.

Managers need to make choices when designing knowledge co-creation process in collaborative product development activities. The use of online and offline approaches can help balance requirements in terms of joint problem-solving across firms, the efficiency of knowledge co-creation and effective of knowledge leakage.

The conceptualization of knowledge co-creation as knowledge sharing and knowledge integration and knowledge application extends existing perspective on knowledge co-creation as either a transfer of knowledge or as revealing the novel situation of pertinent knowledge with entirely assimilate it. The findings point to the complexity of knowledge co-creation as a process influenced by stakeholder engagement, perspectives on knowledge, trust of multiple stakeholders, openness of firm boundaries and mutual learning of SMEs with their stakeholders.