Co-Creating Value With Customers Here's an excerpt of the book, "The Future Of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers". Haven't read the book, but I probably would have noticed it earlier had the title been "Co-Creating Value with Customers" and not "The Future of Competition". It jibes with my customer-centric marketing views. An intriguing concept is presented: the book asserts that the experience of co-creating value itself is part of the value. And the book also validates my firm conviction that leveraging networks and 'platform plays' (that's technology industry jargon, it'd be another post to explain it but essentially it leverages a network too). The emerging reality forces us to reexamine the traditional system of company-centric value creation that has served us so well over the past 100 years. We now need a new frame of reference for value creation. The answer, we believe, lies in a different premise centered on cocreation of value. It begins with the changing role of the consumer in the industrial system. ...And don't mistake self-service for customer involvement. Cocreation, the authors maintain, is not the transfer or outsourcing of activities to customers or a marginal customization of products and services. It isn't scripting or staging of customer events around the company's offerings. Those kinds of company-customer interactions no longer satisfy most consumers today. It's the cocreation experience (not the offering) that is the basis of value for each individual.

Design 2.0: Minimalism, Transparency, and You Today happens to be the four month anniversary of eHub Interviews, a series of email questions and answers with the creators and companies behind many of the new web 2.0 services and applications that we’ve been witnessing and using online. According to many of you who write in, the interviews are “one of your favorite parts… it puts a human face to all of these projects. It really adds a valuable dimension to the web review sites.” I’m glad to hear it. Among many of the self-appointed roles that I have at/as eHub, the interviews are one of my favorite activities. One of the questions asked in each interview is “What is your design philosophy?” In reading the current sixty interview responses, there’s a clear trend towards several key words that continue to appear in people’s answers: simple fast intuitive social minimal choice useful fun There’s also the echo of key actions: listen iterate release early experience discover