My prediction for our professional working world in 2018 is that increasingly we will be working differently, and more co-operatively, with our customers and clients.
This change is being driven by the digital world which is influencing our working lives as professional people more and more and providing new challenges for us and for our clients.
We can no longer work in silos providing our advice, be it financial or legal or commercial, from our professional bubbles of knowledge, ignorant or at least agnostic to the pressures and problems of or clients.
This new way of working is summed up by a word I first heard in this context just before the Christmas break - co-creation. This is a management initiative, or form of economic strategy, that brings different parties together (for instance, a company and a group of customers), in order to jointly produce a mutually valued outcome.
Another definition is “the joint creation of value by the company and the customer; allowing the customer to co-construct the service experience to suit their context.”
The concept articulates for me something I have become increasingly aware of over the last few years. As professionals, the things we have taken for granted and which are the sacred tools of our trade, like our knowledge or even in the context of robotics our skills, are available sometimes even on Google or in some more sophisticated artificial intelligence.
At the same time our customers are facing parallel challenges as business and processes move on line and robotics and AI disturb the supply chain model and churn up traditional business channels. See this article on why brands will need to collaborate to survive and also this McKinsey article on how leading companies involve outsiders in the creative process of developing products and services – which it observes is not always easy.
All of this is an opportunity to get closer to our clients and to work with them sharing knowledge and experience to solve their problems whilst still providing the high level of professional contribution which goes beyond mere knowledge and could be said to be the sum total of our experience applied to a new and novel situation.
I recognise that to some extent co-creation has to date been considered in supply or consumer co-operation but I think its principles will increasingly apply to professional work for clients if we want to continue to make a viable contribution. The subject was even the subject of a thesis in 2012 by Stig Rasmussen at the University of Oslo entitled Co-creation in professional service firms : Problem solving processes as an opportunity for enhanced value creation and creative and innovative project solutions.
For me however it is the digital revolution we are all a part of it which is going to change how we work as professionals and to demand some form of co-creation with our clients. This will mean more and more change in how we and our clients work together but as John F Kennedy sagely said in the last century: “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future”.
This change is being driven by the digital world which is influencing our working lives as professional people more and more and providing new challenges for us and for our clients.
We can no longer work in silos providing our advice, be it financial or legal or commercial, from our professional bubbles of knowledge, ignorant or at least agnostic to the pressures and problems of or clients.
This new way of working is summed up by a word I first heard in this context just before the Christmas break - co-creation. This is a management initiative, or form of economic strategy, that brings different parties together (for instance, a company and a group of customers), in order to jointly produce a mutually valued outcome.
Another definition is “the joint creation of value by the company and the customer; allowing the customer to co-construct the service experience to suit their context.”
The concept articulates for me something I have become increasingly aware of over the last few years. As professionals, the things we have taken for granted and which are the sacred tools of our trade, like our knowledge or even in the context of robotics our skills, are available sometimes even on Google or in some more sophisticated artificial intelligence.
At the same time our customers are facing parallel challenges as business and processes move on line and robotics and AI disturb the supply chain model and churn up traditional business channels. See this article on why brands will need to collaborate to survive and also this McKinsey article on how leading companies involve outsiders in the creative process of developing products and services – which it observes is not always easy.
All of this is an opportunity to get closer to our clients and to work with them sharing knowledge and experience to solve their problems whilst still providing the high level of professional contribution which goes beyond mere knowledge and could be said to be the sum total of our experience applied to a new and novel situation.
I recognise that to some extent co-creation has to date been considered in supply or consumer co-operation but I think its principles will increasingly apply to professional work for clients if we want to continue to make a viable contribution. The subject was even the subject of a thesis in 2012 by Stig Rasmussen at the University of Oslo entitled Co-creation in professional service firms : Problem solving processes as an opportunity for enhanced value creation and creative and innovative project solutions.
For me however it is the digital revolution we are all a part of it which is going to change how we work as professionals and to demand some form of co-creation with our clients. This will mean more and more change in how we and our clients work together but as John F Kennedy sagely said in the last century: “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future”.
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