Earlier this year the Altimeter Group produced a report looking at the so called collaborative economy.  The report looked at the rise of sites such as airBnB and oDesk, who were leading the charge of organisations letting us buy and sell from one another more effectively.

A new paper from Avans University looks to delve deeper into this topic.  The paper provides an overview of how co-creation is being used around the world.  Suffice to say it’s a slightly more academic look at the movement than the Altimeter paper, but I think the two work nicely alongside one another.  Here’s the abstract:

This article reviews how co-creation is developing over the world and how different businesses are able to use co-creation. To give a clear sight of that, stories of companies, marketers and trend watchers will be used to tell about this phenomenon called crowdsourcing and co-creation. Marketers found a method to combine co-creation with the existing method of creating something new. Based on research we can now predict how co-creation will develop over the following years.

The evolution of co-creation is more exciting than we previously thought and we think that these results have to do with how the internet and social media have developed. A revolution is coming up and organizations will see an increase in turnover based on fast innovation and participation by the crowd.

We are living a world with a new dimension: a dimension where large organizations have no reason for existence when customers aren’t satisfied with their purchase, the organization’s service and most of all their feeling of participation. Consumers feel that they should have the power to change visions and missions of the old fashioned marketing way: the manipulative way to earn money. A dimension where 24/7 online is the key to succeed, fast responses to questions and remarks. In this time if continuous changes, creativity is a must.”