What Is Co‑Creation? Guide (2026)

Speed and relevance matter when building a new product or service. One of the most powerful ways to move fast without guessing is to bring the people who will use your product into the process. That is the essence of what is co creation. It means working with customers, users or partners instead of keeping decisions locked inside a conference room. For founders, product managers and design leaders at early‑stage startups, this practice promises sharper ideas, fewer missteps and a community that feels invested in your work. In this article I’ll unpack the meaning and origins of co‑creation, explain why it is such a useful approach for young teams, offer a framework for running a co‑creation initiative and share real examples. 

What Is Co‑Creation?

At its core co‑creation invites people outside your company to contribute to the design and development of your product or service. A 2025 update from Braineet defines customer co‑creation as inviting stakeholders, usually customers or employees, to participate in a design or problem‑solving process to produce a mutually valued outcome. The team at Interaction Design describes co‑creation as collaboration where different participants contribute expertise and viewpoints, leading to stronger solutions. 

Put simply, co‑creation is an invitation to customers, users, suppliers or partners to ideate and build with you rather than for them. It is not just a focus group, which often asks for opinions on finished concepts. It is also not the same as internal research and development, where decisions are made by employees alone. Co‑creation opens the door early and allows outsiders to have a say in the outcome.

Roots in marketing and service thinking

The concept has roots in marketing and service‑dominant logic. Researchers such as C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy argued two decades ago that value is created through interactions between companies and consumers rather than by companies alone. Early academic work noted how the internet allowed consumers to engage in an explicit dialogue with manufacturers. This shift from firm‑centric value creation to models that include stakeholders underpins modern co‑creation.

Web‑based tools and social platforms have further removed barriers. Research emphasises that integrating customers and stakeholders into the innovation process improves productivity and reduces costs. According to Braineet, 58 percent of businesses are now piloting co‑creation projects to drive innovation. These statistics show that co‑creation has moved from theory to mainstream practice.

Why co‑creation matters for startups and product/design teams

Benefits you gain:

• Better product–market fit: involving customers early helps you build things that solve real problems. Co‑creation projects have a 30 percent higher success rate than those without collaborative efforts, and user‑centric companies see a four‑fold increase in customer loyalty. When customers help create something, they are more likely to support and advocate for it.
• Collaborative innovation: working with outsiders brings new perspectives and ideas. By combining expertise from users, employees and partners, teams can generate novel concepts that may not emerge from an internal brainstorming session. This kind of shared innovation sits at the centre of this practice.
• Faster learning and reduced risk: sharing early ideas with users and partners lets you test assumptions sooner. Feedback loops shorten development cycles and reduce wasted effort. In my work with SaaS teams (where budgets and resources are tight), opening early prototypes to a small group of users has consistently helped us avoid building features nobody wanted.
• Stronger loyalty and advocacy: people who help build a product often feel proud of it. Data from product experience research shows that customers who trust a brand are three times more likely to stick with it through a mistake and 88 percent are more likely to buy again. Co‑creation fosters that trust because stakeholders see their own input reflected in the result.
• New partnerships and revenue: co‑creation can also open new business models. Sharing ideas with suppliers, academic partners or complementary startups can lead to joint offerings or revenue streams you wouldn’t have imagined on your own.

Relevance for early‑stage teams

Early‑stage startups face tight budgets and small teams. Every wrong move hurts. Co‑creation allows you to do more with less by tapping into the wisdom of your users, employees and partners. As a product or design lead, you can embed stakeholder involvement into your process rather than adding it as an afterthought. Co‑creation is particularly useful during service design and user experience work, where deep empathy for real users can reveal what features matter most. In this context, asking how to co‑create becomes a practical question about how to involve people effectively.

Pitfalls and challenges

Co‑creation is not always smooth. Inviting many voices can create confusion, slow decision‑making and dilute your vision. Coordinating stakeholder involvement adds management work: you need to recruit participants, set clear expectations and facilitate discussions. Intellectual property and confidentiality concerns may arise if you disclose proprietary ideas too early. Finally, alignment is crucial; including the wrong stakeholders or giving them unclear roles can produce ideas that stray from your strategy. Early‑stage teams must balance openness with structure to avoid chaos.

Principles and process of effective co‑creation

1) Stakeholder engagement and collaborative innovation

Co‑creation starts with identifying who should be involved. Stakeholders include customers, end users, employees from different functions, suppliers, community members and industry partners. The goal is to tap into a varied group whose lived experiences can shape your product or service. This is not about a one‑way survey; it is a two‑way conversation where the company and stakeholders co‑design solutions. Research stresses that integrating customers and stakeholders into the innovation process improves productivity and reduces costs. That shared value is central to what is co creation.

2) Problem framing, joint problem solving and creative collaboration

Effective co‑creation begins by agreeing on the problem to solve. Before asking people to design features, define the question together: what pain point are we tackling? Joint problem solving helps ensure everyone is working toward the same goal. Workshops, design sprints and prototyping sessions are useful. These sessions are not about sitting quietly while users talk; they are about drawing, building and testing ideas side by side. The Interaction‑Design.org article emphasises that co‑creation allows cross‑pollination of expertise and viewpoints, leading to richer solutions.

3) Partnership development and product/service involvement

Co‑creation is not limited to customers. Partners such as suppliers, academic labs or even other startups can bring fresh capabilities. Unilever’s Open Innovation platform, for example, invites startups, academics and customers to propose solutions to specific challenges and offers commercial contracts if ideas succeed. More than sixty percent of Unilever’s research projects now involve external collaboration. In product development, including lead users in early beta sessions or letting them co‑design service paths helps refine features before launch.

4) Value creation and shared gains

Co‑creation creates value both for the company and for participants. When you involve stakeholders in the creation process, they enjoy a sense of ownership. They may gain recognition, small payments or the satisfaction of shaping something they care about. In return, the organisation receives insights it could not have uncovered alone. This shift from selling a finished product to working with people to build it is at the heart of what is co creation.

5) Process and roles

A typical co‑creation initiative follows four stages:

1. Preparation: identify the problem, map relevant stakeholders and set clear goals. Decide what you want to learn or achieve and how you will use the input.
   
   
2. Engagement: invite stakeholders, run workshops, facilitate ideation sessions and gather feedback. Use low‑fidelity prototypes or conversation starters to spark ideas.
   
   
3. Development: synthesize the input, develop prototypes and iterate with continued stakeholder involvement. Keep participants informed so they see how their ideas influence the outcome.
   
   
4. Implementation: finalise the product or service, launch it and monitor results. Share credit publicly and maintain channels for ongoing input.

Roles in this process include a facilitator who plans and leads sessions; participants such as users, customers or partners; internal team members like product managers, designers and engineers who integrate feedback; and a sponsor who provides resources and authority. Tools range from physical workshops to web‑based communities, design sprints and beta programs. 

How to launch a co‑creation initiative

When to use co‑creation in your product or service lifecycle

Co‑creation is helpful at three stages of a startup’s growth. Use it early during discovery to validate assumptions, understand user needs and shape service design. Bring customers into ideation sessions, ask them to prioritise features and test prototypes. During growth and scale, co‑creation helps refine features, adjust pricing and optimise service flows. When expanding into new markets or building partnerships, co‑creation can uncover fresh opportunities and open the door to joint ventures. At each stage you should ask what is co creation and decide how much openness is appropriate.

Step‑by‑step framework for founders and product leads

Here is a framework based on patterns I’ve used with SaaS teams:

1. Define the challenge: articulate the problem or opportunity. For example, “reduce onboarding time for new users by half.”
   
   
2. Identify and recruit stakeholders: choose customers, partners or employees who have relevant experience. Aim for a varied group rather than a random sample.
   
   
3. Set clear objectives and roles: explain what you are asking participants to do, how much time is involved and what they will gain. Be transparent about the boundaries of the project.
   
   
4. Choose engagement methods: decide whether you will run a workshop, build an online community, conduct interviews or hold a design sprint. Keep the format light so people feel comfortable contributing.
   
   
5. Run ideation and joint problem solving: capture ideas and let people prototype with you. Encourage sketching, simple prototypes and honest feedback. Remind participants that there are no bad ideas at this stage.
   
   
6. Develop with stakeholders: build prototypes based on the best ideas and invite participants to test them. Iterate quickly, showing how input is shaping the product.
   
   
7. Launch and monitor: release the product or feature, track engagement and measure metrics such as time to market, customer satisfaction and retention.
   
   
8. Reflect and refine: after launch, evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Share findings with participants and decide how to evolve the co‑creation program.

Tools and platforms useful for co‑creation

You do not need fancy software to start. Early‑stage teams often use Slack or Discord communities to gather user feedback. Simple survey tools, Miro boards, Google Docs and prototypes can support idea capture. For more structured initiatives, platforms like Braineet or Unilever’s Open Innovation portal allow companies to manage submissions and track contributions. The key is to integrate co‑creation into your existing agile or lean processes rather than treat it as a separate project.

Metrics and success indicators

Measuring co‑creation ensures you are not just collecting ideas but delivering impact. Quantitative metrics include:

• Engagement: number of participants, ideas submitted and active discussions.
  
  
• Idea quality: number of ideas taken into development, prototypes built, patents filed.
  
  
• Product outcomes: reductions in time to market, increases in customer satisfaction scores, reduced churn or improved adoption.
  
  
• Business outcomes: partnerships formed, cost savings (for example, DeWalt’s Insight Community saved almost six million dollars in research costs), revenue growth linked to co‑created features.

Qualitative metrics involve assessing stakeholder satisfaction, sense of ownership and the strength of the community around your product. Share the results openly to show participants that their contributions matter.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Some traps come up again and again. Inviting too broad or mis‑aligned stakeholders leads to unfocused ideas. Avoid this by careful stakeholder mapping and a clear brief. Weak facilitation produces low‑quality input; invest in good moderators and meaningful incentives. Not acting on inputs breeds disillusionment; close the loop by showing which ideas were used and why. Mismanaging expectations can cause participants to think they have final say; be clear about decision rights from the start. Inside the company, ensure internal team members feel ownership so that co‑creation does not become a “side project.”

Real‑world examples and case studies

Co‑creation is not just theory. These cases show how different organisations put the concept into practice:

These cases illustrate what co-creation is co creation in practice. They show that the approach can work for products, services and big or small organisations. Each case rewards participants for their input and closes the loop by implementing ideas.

Integrating co‑creation into your product and service strategy

1) Matching with product roadmaps and design thinking

Co‑creation complements agile, lean startup and design thinking approaches. During the discovery and validation stages of product development, co‑creation provides real‑world input to guide hypotheses. It helps teams focus on problems worth solving and co‑design solutions rather than guess. When used with design thinking, co‑creation ensures empathy and ideation are not just internal exercises but involve the very people you aim to serve. This integration brings what is co creation to life within your roadmap.

2) Building a practice of co‑creation in your startup

To adopt co‑creation beyond a single project, encourage an open mindset that views stakeholders as partners rather than outsiders. Structure cross‑functional teams that include product, design, engineering and partnerships. Create channels where users, customers and suppliers can share feedback continuously. An active community not only feeds your roadmap with ideas but also builds loyalty. In my experience, establishing a small “user council” that meets monthly has helped teams stay grounded in real needs.

3) Scaling from pilot to ongoing program

Start with a pilot on a contained problem. Once you find a process that works, formalise it into an ongoing program. Define governance: who moderates, how ideas are selected, what incentives exist and how you report progress. Sustain momentum by celebrating wins, publishing participant stories and refreshing engagement methods. As your company grows, consider dedicated roles for community management and open innovation. Keep asking yourself why you are co‑creating to ensure you stay true to its principles rather than letting it become a marketing tactic.

Looking ahead: trends and the future of co‑creation

The future of co‑creation is tied to technology and social shifts. Web‑based collaboration platforms make it easier to involve people remotely. Remote work and distributed teams mean you can draw on global communities. Open innovation networks are expanding outside of customers to include suppliers, non‑profits and local communities. At the intersection of service design, experience design and co‑creation, companies are moving outside product features to co‑design entire experiences. For startups, this means adopting web‑based tools for remote workshops, building community‑led products and partnering with ecosystems rather than operating alone.

At the same time, complexity will increase. Managing co‑creation across varied stakeholder groups requires clear governance and a willingness to listen. Companies must measure return on investment and be honest about the limits of co‑creation. As the practice matures, the question will shift from what is co creation to how to sustain it at scale without losing focus.

Conclusion

Co‑creation is more than a trendy term. It is a practical approach to building products and services with, not just for, the people who use them. We have examined the roots of the idea, its benefits and challenges, the principles and processes involved, a framework for running an initiative, real case studies and how to integrate co‑creation into your strategy. The examples of IKEA, DeWalt and La Poste show that involving outsiders can generate new ideas, save money and improve service outcomes. The research from Voltage Control and Braineet provides evidence of higher success rates and greater customer loyalty.

As a founder or product leader, the next step is to try co‑creation in your own context. Start small, listen carefully and respect the time of those who participate. By involving the community early, you are more likely to build something they care about and less likely to waste scarce resources. That is the simple answer to what is co creation: an invitation to build together.

FAQ

1. What is the meaning of co‑creation? 

Co‑creation is the process by which organisations and external stakeholders such as customers, users or partners collaborate to design, develop or deliver a product, service or experience. Unlike traditional development, co‑creation shifts value creation from the company alone to a shared process of innovation and problem solving.

2. What is an example of co‑creation? 

IKEA’s Co‑Create IKEA platform invites customers to submit product ideas and participate in bootcamps, and winning concepts may be licensed or supported. Another example is DeWalt’s Insight Community, where more than twelve thousand users suggest improvements, leading to new products and saving nearly six million dollars in research costs. These examples show what is co creation in practice.

3. What is co‑creation in a partnership context? 

In a partnership context, co‑creation refers to two or more parties working together to design solutions rather than one party dictating terms. For example, a service design firm and a client might run a workshop to map the service path and jointly decide on improvements. It emphasises mutual responsibility and joint development rather than a top‑down arrangement.