Why co-creation leads to powerful digital innovation – Management Today

Advances in electronic technology create opportunities to innovate across multiple industries. Whether it’s using artificial intelligence in order to create a new customer experience at electric car charging stations; streamline how quickly patients can be seen in A& E; or explore new business opportunities for telecom operators in digitalising live events – it is the collaboration between companies from a variety of sectors and information technology providers that are driving real success.

The need for digital transformation fundamentally changes the nature of relations between  technology providers such as IBM, Microsoft and Amazon plus their clients. IT companies need to go beyond simply selling innovative IT products or services to clients’ THIS departments and instead develop capabilities for collaboration that respond to their specific digital transformation pathways. This could be improving the efficiency of their current operations, developing digital solutions that support strategic differentiation or helping the client discover future-oriented business opportunities.      

Meet your ‘innovation squad’
IBM has found that close collaboration plus co-creation is the key to unlocking innovation that will delivers actual value on their client’s biggest problems and opportunities. It is this recognition that has led to the creation plus rapid scaling of the Client Engineering team. The cross-skilled team of 1, 600 engineers, architects, designers, consultants and data scientists was globally hired specifically in order to transform exactly how IBM engages with its key customers and become the trusted innovation partner.  

An agile ‘squad’ consisting of IBM’s company transformation experts, designers, solution architects and data scientists work closely together with a client to create innovative digital options. This approach shows clients how technology can work with regard to their benefit, builds trust in IBM expertise, increases the particular interest in IBM technology plus opens up new collaborative possibilities.  

Developing organisational capabilities for co-creation with clients is based on three pillars: diversity of experience, unique development process and strategic leadership.  

Diversity associated with expertise  
In just 18 months, IBM hired a large number of digital technologies experts that significantly increased the variety of the Client Engineering team. Moreover, the spirit of collaborative innovation enabled IBM in order to attract a new generation of electronic experts less constrained with the technological plus cultural legacy of IBM. This influx of fresh thinking combined with IBM’s deep understanding of technology and their client’s subject matter knowledge creates a diverse inter-organisational group with varied knowledge plus experiences. It is this diversity that enables the co-creation of revolutionary solutions that will either radically improve client’s business processes or help explore new company opportunities.    

Unique advancement process
Co-creation is supported by an unique creativity process that combines elements of Design Thinking along with Agile software development and Lean start-up principles. IBM’s team takes the client on a journey to understand present challenges plus opportunities, and then ideate potential solutions to these together. It’s a creative and collaborative process facilitated through research, workshops plus conversations.  

After creating a shared vision for the future, they work to identify how the particular client can take their own first step of this particular journey – prioritising maximum value, learning and risk minimisation. After agreeing this and outlining a hypothesis (including pre-defined success criteria), IBM will assemble the team to spend 2-8 weeks designing and building out a ‘proof associated with value’. During the design and build phase, the customer can be as involved as they like; sometimes co-designing and co-building the solution, or sometimes attending weekly playbacks and providing feedback.  

The end goal is to test the answer against the hypothesis and either direct it to the right team within IBM or its ecosystem partners to scale the solution – or pivot into a direction that works better. This robust process enables IBM in order to identify clients’ needs plus rapidly adapt to their innovation challenges.      

Strategic leadership
As IBM moves from the traditional sales model to a more collaborative and innovation-driven client engagement, the particular changes affect the role of account technical leaders who are responsible regarding building plus sustaining strategic engagement with the key clients. They increasingly need to demonstrate tactical competency within matching client’s innovation strategy with IBM’s expertise and technology portfolio.  

Furthermore, they need to be entrepreneurial plus frame broader innovation opportunities that set the scene for the more targeted co-creation process using the customer. This requires creating distinct social interactions along with clients leading to mutual understanding associated with strategic directions. Establishing such a strategic intimacy is crucial to influence interpretation of innovation opportunity and increase its resonance for customers. If unique innovation processes are critical for effective adaptation to the client’s needs, the proper leadership is vital for a more ambitious shaping of the collaborative development journey.  

Getting the right heads together
Co-creating is not easy and it is not really without managerial challenges, yet it remains a strategic imperative. Obtaining the right people from the client organisation in the room and keeping them committed throughout the intensive process of co-creation is a very tangible challenge. IT professionals with whom  i . t providers historically built near relations may not be the drivers of advancement with clients. Expanding interactions to these non-IT professionals is an important essential that requires skilful navigation throughout the customer organisation.  

Perhaps the particular most intriguing challenge will be to define a level of creativity ambition. Innovation comes in different shapes or even forms plus it is usually often tempting for both clients and information technology providers in order to focus on low hanging fruits – for example , the use associated with previously tested technological solutions promising incremental improvements.

But this potentially leaves out exciting plus more future-oriented innovation possibilities. The IBM approach allows clients to tackle various levels of innovation ambition. The company’s unique innovation process supports adapting in order to different development challenges experienced by clients. Tactical leadership and ability to skillfully frame entrepreneurial opportunities becomes increasingly important if the goal of co-creation is in order to shape markets of the future.