INTRODUCTION TO THE CO-CREATION PARADIGM

Propelled by advances in global communication and information technologies, the nature of interactions among individuals and their environments has been changing rapidly, driving an ongoing metamorphosis of value creation in business, economy, and society. The centrality of personal and collective agency with the advent of the Web and the progression of new mobile technologies has accelerated the generation of data through interactions, the communication and exchange of information, and the democratization of value creation. Individuals—whether customers, employees, suppliers, partners, financiers, or citizens at large—are playing out their different interests from both within and outside of traditional enterprises. Nongovernmental and social organizations are taking increasingly assertive roles vis-à-vis corporations. Citizens and communities are engaging local and national governments in the deliberation of policies and the delivery of services. In all these cases, individuals are attempting to push through previously impervious institutional boundaries to express their various demands and expectations. In other words, individuals as active stakeholders want to be more intensively engaged in value creation than ever before.

What is the significance of this new age of engagement? As depicted in Figure 1-1, a fundamental implication is that enterprises—whether private, public, or social sector enterprises and whether established or at the start-up stage—must be architected as a nexus of engagement platforms, organizing human agency to create value with, and for, all stakeholding individuals as co-creators.

Using two examples from the private sector, an established enterprise (Nike) and a start-up (Local Motors), let us illustrate:

1. how engagement platforms—assemblages of persons, processes, artifacts, and interfaces—can create value together with stakeholding individuals;

2. how enterprises as a nexus of engagement platforms can connect value creation opportunities with value-creating resources in new "win more–win more" ways; and

3. how private, public, and social sector enterprises have the potential to converge on matters of wealth, welfare, and wellbeing, while positively transforming business, economy, and society in ways we are only beginning to grasp.

CREATING VALUE TOGETHER THROUGH ENGAGEMENT PLATFORMS

In 2006, Nike launched NikePlus, a running experience platform, with the communications tagline "Get connected to your running experiences." It consisted of a smart sensor that gathered data (e.g., steps, distance, pace) while you—the "stakeholding individual" of your running experience—enjoyed your run. If you ran with the Apple iPod, then the sensor could be placed inside your shoe, with the data being wirelessly transmitted to and stored on the iPod, which also served as an interface for your runs. The combination of data and music also enabled you to pull up your personal motivating tunes, or Power Songs, just when your energy started to dip. If you didn't listen to music during your runs, then a Nike SportBand, an armband introduced by Nike in June 2009, offered a combined sensor and data storage option, while providing an interface for your running data. Either way, after your run, you could go to the NikePlus website and perform many functions related to your running experience with both your own data and with a community of runners. For example, you could chart your run; track your progress; analyze your performance; map your runs; share data with your family, friends, coaches, or trainers; and even invite and challenge other runners. You could also engage in a whole host of social interactions with other people that would not necessarily revolve around your running data, such as find running buddies, connect with running events that Nike and others organize, or engage in conversations with other runners through the NikePlus-enabled community.

The smart sensor was a required artifact to participate in an assemblage of other artifacts, persons, processes, and interfaces, all purposefully designed with the intent of generating running data-based outcomes of value to runners and other stakeholders both external and internal to the Nike enterprise (e.g., trainers, coaches, and individuals in managerial functions at Nike). The digitization of momentary analog data facilitates linkages between offline and online interactions, between individuals and the community of runners, and between individuals and their trainers and coaches.

The ways in which individuals could affect their running environments—before, during, and after a run—are multiplied. Various domains of human experiences unfold as a function of the involvements of individuals in the environments afforded by NikePlus, such as engaging with music or data while running (e.g., the voiceover of Olympic athletes through the Apple iPod that announces your progress and milestones achieved). In extending the intentionalities of NikePlus engagements, one can imagine Nike taking any of the environments afforded to runners and enabling connections to the environments of other stakeholders (e.g., marathon organizers or fitness instructors), as well as communities of runners in new roles.

Thus, NikePlus is enveloped in a larger ecosystem of capabilities —a meshwork of social, business, civic, and natural communities whose capabilities can be leveraged as co-creative resources to afford new value creation possibilities. For instance, the Nike RunReporter platform, which NikePlus links with, attempts to engage nonprofessional runners who can report live from marathon running events (like citizen journalists). These RunReporters can potentially enhance the running environment of a particular runner in a marathon run or the experience of a spectator at the marathon event. The co-creative resource networks not only generate additional value from the perspective of runners (the traditional customer base of Nike Running), but they also represent new value creation opportunities in of themselves. For instance, by looking at NikePlus from a "trainer as customer" perspective, Nike was able to imagine new environments of interactions that connect with NikePlus, such as the ability for a trainer to interact with a group of runners and coach them both individually and as a group, drawing on other resources in the Nike enterprise ecosystem. This, in turn, led Nike to leverage meshworks of running, coaching, and training communities to afford new environments of interactions and potentially new outcomes of value for all...