Product and Service Co-Creation in Design-Driven Innovation: An Attempt to Classify Co-Creation Practices[La cocréation de produits et services au service de l’innovation par le design : Essai de classification des pratiques de co-création de produits et services]

Today, companies increasingly integrate consumers into their product and service development projects. Within the design process, this "prosuming consumer" is viewed as a co-creator alongside engineers, designers, and marketers. The central issue addressed in this paper concerns how to classify and prioritize the diverse and heterogeneous practices of product and service co-creation (idea boxes, contests, community platforms, etc.) in order to optimally involve consumers in the design management process. A documentary phase examining co-creation practices implemented by companies across different sectors and countries will first identify and inventory these practices, before proposing a classification framework based on their characteristics, expected outcomes, and the degree of consumer engagement required. Around thirty concrete cases documented over the past ten years will illustrate this taxonomy. Ultimately, this attempt aims to establish a link between the practices actually used by firms and the level of creative consumer empowerment they generate. The contributions are threefold: At the instrumental level, by providing an overview of current forms of co-creation supporting design projects; At the marketing level, by examining the modalities through which consumers are integrated into design management processes; At the managerial level, by proposing a hierarchy of co-creation practices that facilitates their selection according to the desired degree of consumer co-creative engagement.