Executive Interviews: Interview with Gaurav Bhalla on Co-Creation
March 2010 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Gaurav Bhalla
Gaurav Bhalla, has 30+ years of global experience helping companies implement innovation, strategy, marketing, and business growth programs.

• What kind of organizational capabilities should be built up before embracing co-creation as a new way of doing business?
  You will get a biased answer fromme. But first a clarification is necessary. Its not what should be built up before embracing co-creation, it’s how a company should live its life if it wants to collaborate with customers. The framework which I use in my consulting and which also features prominently in my forthcoming book on collaboration and co-creation, is Listen-Engage-Respond, with Respond having two phases, responding on the outside, cocreating with customers, and responding on the inside, aligning the organization.
  The rationale for this framework can be expressed as follows:
  Listen – conversations with customers are impossible without first listening to them
  Engage – thick, meaningful, and ongoing conversations with customers help deepen our understanding of their needs and behaviors
  Co-creation – insight and understanding developed through listening and engagement can be used for co-creation, i.e., refinement of current value or development of new value
  Alignment – companies that want to develop a co-creation competence need to create enabling structures and processes for generating ideas, determining which of these will be targeted for co-creation, and then actually implementing co-creation programs.

• What is the role of leadership in preparing organizations to embrace the new value-driven philosophy of co-creation?
  Without the active involvement and support of a company’s leadership, co-creation is a non-starter. Most companies are still very inward looking. They subscribe to the view that certain things, like marketing, innovation, and R&D, should be done by the company. They are not able to give good reasons as to why customers should be involved in these operations. They believe in the “not invented here” philosophy of value creation and feel they have all the smart people in the world to take care of their future innovation needs. Usually, leaders at companies that have been successful are personally involved in leading this transformation.
  

  • AG Lafley reenergized P&G because he believed that the customer is the boss, and that having a courageous and connected culture is essential for growth
  • Sam Palmisano bet his company’s future on the Smarter Planet initiative; a collection of business initiatives co-created in innovation jams
  • Mark Schwab reorganized Crayola around customer benefit platforms, like No-Mess and Essentials, because they supported collaboration and cocreation better than a productcentered structure (crayons, pencils, paints, magic markers, etc.)
  • Ecomagination and Reverse Innovation at GE would not have been possible but for Jeff Immelt’s personal involvement and sponsorship.