This is the fifth in a series of question-and-answer blog posts with the CEOs of the vendors included in my recent Forrester Wave™: Co-Creation Contest Vendors, Q3 2011 (blog and report).

Today we’re talking with Maxim Schram, CEO of Redesignme. Redesignme, a firm based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, was identified as a "Strong Performer" in that report, based on its Redesignme Connect product.

Doug:          Co-creation contests are a new opportunity for product strategy professionals to solve business challenges, but many people are unfamiliar with them. What is your “elevator pitch” to potential clients about co-creation contests and the benefits they deliver?

Maxim:       We believe in Bill Joy’s vision (co-founder of Sun Microsystems): “There are always more smart people outside your team or company than within it.” A co-creation contest is an extremely efficient and fun way to collect, discuss and elaborate on fresh new insights and ideas. Setting up something similar in an offline environment can be time consuming and costly. A lot of the challenges on our website are initiated by companies that see co-creation contests as the perfect starting point for an innovation process. The ideas collected often count as input for creative sessions, design projects and market research. Besides, joining an online co-creation contest can inspire one’s own creativity and result in commitment amongst a project group or department.

This is the third in a series of question-and-answer blog posts with the CEOs of the vendors included in my recent Forrester Wave™: Co-Creation Contest Vendors, Q3 2011 (blog and report).

Today we’re talking with Bastian Unterberg, CEO of jovoto GmbH.  Jovoto, a Berlin-based firm, was identified as a "Leader" in that report.

Doug:    Co-creation contests are a new opportunity for product strategy professionals to solve business challenges, but many people are unfamiliar with them. What is your “elevator pitch” to potential clients about co-creation contests and the benefits they deliver?

Bastian:     By providing a social and collaborative work environment, jovoto motivates creative communities and enables them to collaborate, driving better results.  Organizations are able to access these communities and their members to solve creative and innovation needs.

Benefits to product strategy and other professionals involved in the innovation process are:

• Better results. A vast amount of diverse, independent talent which collaboratively, simply, delivers better creative results.
• Unlocking the art of the possible. New and refreshing perspectives, filtered through a peer review process, explore a diverse set of solutions. A collaborative process facilitates solving complex problem.

This is the first in a series of question-and-answer blog posts with the CEOs of the vendors included in my recent Forrester Wave™: Co-Creation Contest Vendors, Q3 2011 (blog and report (for clients).

First up is Riley Gibson, CEO of Napkin Labs. Napkin Labs, a Boulder, Colorado-based shop, was identified as a "Strong Performer" in that report.

Doug:    Co-creation contests are a new opportunity for product strategy professionals to solve business challenges, but many people are unfamiliar with them. What is your “elevator pitch” to potential clients about co-creation contests and the benefits they deliver?

Riley:     Napkin Labs gives companies their own crowdsourcing platform to make their social networks more productive. Our platform is simple enough to launch in minutes and has a variety of apps that make collaboration, brainstorming, and consumer research simple for small businesses and large brands.

Doug:    Why should product strategy professionals consider co-creation a business imperative at this point in time?

Riley:     First it was email. Then it was social media. Now it's co-creation and crowdsourcing. Every new communication channel is an opportunity to build customer loyalty and gain insights in new ways. And eventually every company has to do it to remain relevant.