Co-creation has been a while as a concept but the web is allowing it to go to new lengths. I recently wrote about Cisco’s I-Prize on this blog (see Mining the Web and the World for Innovation) that is a great example of co-creation that allows the web world to participate. McKinsey recently released a study on the topic, The Next Step in Open Innovation. The abstract says, “The Internet and new social-networking technologies are allowing companies and their customers to interact with unprecedented levels of richness. Some leading organizations are using this opportunity to draw customers into the heart of the product-development process.” However, they also caution, “Cocreating products and services with customers, however, is uncertain territory fraught with challenges and questions—for instance, who owns the resulting intellectual property?”

They write that the topic is too new to draw definitive conclusions what to do and who should do it. However, they say it is not to soon for companies to think about, along with the opportunities, risks, and challenges. They provide a nice summary of this issues: attracting and motivating cocreators, structuring problems for participation, providing governance mechanisms to facilitate cocreation, and maintaining quality. I think the Cisco I-Prize effort scores high on each of these issues.

The report provided some useful stats from their research, twenty five percent of Western Europe’s Internet users post comments and reviews about consumer products. They add that user-generated web sites are expanding in numbers of visitors and participants by 100 percent a year, while traditional web sites by perhaps 20 to 30 percent. This data provides nice support for the vitality of web 2.0.

The report provides some research from Second Life about cocreation activities. A good number of people on Second Life are actually involved in cocreation activities and it seems more would if they know about the possibilities. However, it think efforts like Cisco I-Prize that do not require undergoing the entrance requirements that Second Life requires, will reach a large audience. While the 12 million or so on Second Life might be more inclined to do this cocreation, they are a much more limited, and perhaps biased, audience that they general web. I would just reach out to the web. There is much more to the article and this is a topic that I feel will only increase in importance.

As I was finishing this up I noticed that the New York Times published a piece on the topic, If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone. If is more from the innovators perspective and makes an interesting contrast to the McKinsey report. It says that “Today, would-be innovators can sign up online to compete for prizes for feats as diverse as landing on the Moon and inventing artificial meat.” Read more and pick your specialty.