Saturday, November 23, 2013

Co-Creation and Accelerated Value Methodology

For many years, at Knowledge Associates Cambridge, I have been practicing with our clients 'Accelerated Value Methodology' (AVM). In essence, it organises my consulting work with clients into short 'value frames' of maybe 4 weeks duration maximum. At the beginning and at the end of of each value frame we conduct a 'value assessment'. This focuses the client and ourselves on the business value that we are delivering. It has proven to be a most successful approach and a key component of our client engagement methodology.

In recent years, at Knowledge Associates Cambridge, we have focused more on innovation management, and the link between effective knowledge management and innovation. We have been working hard with 'mainstreaming innovation' across the organisation, or if you prefer, 'innovation for everyone'.

This last year, we have focused far more on 'Co-Creation'. In particular, the creation of new value with our customers. In essence, the customer becomes a key part of the process of developing products and services together. This has only become possible in recent years due to the dramatically improved communications, collaboration and knowledge management methods, tools and techniques that have become available. We can now work in radically new ways.

But this blog post has been inspired by my realisation, this morning, that finding new and better ways to interact with the customer, and get the customer totally involved in the value creative process, is not new. For Knowledge Associates Cambridge, it started in the 1990's with Accelerated Value Methodology and today, leading in to 2014, it has been much further developed into the discipline of Stakeholder Co-Creation, and especially, Customer Co-Creation.

Ron Young