My friday at PICNIC ’08 started at the workshop ‘The Power of Co-Creation’ by Albert Boswijk (European Centre for the Experience Economy) and Raul Lansink (Favela Fabric). The workshop was actually partially co-created by the attendees: everyone shared their questions on co-creation and examples of co-creation. These drove the discussion and any unanswered questions will be sent to all attendees in the near future. Besides the classical Lego, Fiat and other examples also other initiatives were mentioned by the audience. Amongst them the Amsterdam Balloon Party where guests dress-up and do mini-performances themselves on a specific theme. One of the attendees mentioned the launch of an Ikea initiative (‘Rip Ikea’) to stimulate users to go freestyle with their furniture parts and thus create new objects. We saw this on the recent Hacking Ikea design event, but she may have implied a further roll-out of this concept.
Raul pointed out that co-creation is suited for small incremental innovations and no “big bang” ideas are to be expected. He also stated that it is all about a ‘contract’ between an organisation and their co-creators, where the organisation promises to listen and act/deliver upon the outcome of the proces. Managing and living up to user expectations as well as the willingness to experience the yet unknown outcome, are the actual key factors to successful co-creation.

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