How collaborative innovation and co-creation can deliver value: a stakeholder approach

This project explores how collaborative innovation and co-creation between stakeholders can deliver value for firms. In today’s increasingly competitive and fast-changing global marketplace, firms must seek to develop more frequent and higher quality innovations (Ngugi et al, 2010). In addition, customers, employees and other stakeholders are demanding opportunities to co-create and collaborate with businesses more and more. As Ramaswamy (2010) comments: “Providers of products and services are challenged by customers who are increasingly informed, connected, networked and empowered. Customers, employees and stakeholders are demanding higher quality interactions and experiences from businesses and a deeper engagement in the value-creation and service delivery processes” (Ramaswamy, 2010, pp. 22). Given this increasing need to collaborate, innovate and co-create, firms need a better understanding of how they can engage in these activities in a way that maximises the value created for all stakeholders; this project, through exploratory, qualitative research interviews and a wide-ranging literature review, seeks to make a contribution in this area

The commercialisation of social media

This report explores how social media tools are being commercialised by business. It provides an overview of the relevance of social media to both business to business and business to consumer operations; lists common channels of social media; places development of social media into a historical context outlining future predictions; identifies and answers a range of common problems facing companies looking to commercialise social media; looks at a taxonomy of opportunities for commercialising social media; and presents ongoing research findings of the Henley Centre for Customer Management’s study entitled ‘Commercialising Social Media.

Clean and dirty: playing with boundaries of consumer’s safe havens

The marketplace, with its continuously increasing symbolic nature and infinitely many alternative consumption choices, poses a disorderly and threatening environment for consumers. This conceptual paper discusses the ways in which consumers magically create, eliminate, or shift many boundaries surrounding them through rituals and practices related with cleanliness in order to construct a safe ‘home’ in an otherwise threatening environment