The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers

THE FUTURE OF COMPETITION: CO-CREATING UNIQUE VALUE WITH CUSTOMERSC.K. Prahalad & Venkat RamaswamyThe authors - C.K. Prahlad and Venkat Ramaswamy, are known for their non-traditional approach and that has made possible to bring out this path breaking book. Unlearning age old management practices and understanding the changes that is sweeping the business world and giving a framework to the still evolving concept of co-creation of value where customer is at the centre stage is indeed a tough task. And authors have accomplished that with aplomb.Our industrial system is generating more goods and services than before but customer satisfaction remains low in spite of having overwhelming choices, profit level of companies is shrinking though many more decision making tools are at its disposal. What is going wrong and how to set this right? Companies are grappling with these issues and trying to fathom these problems. With the emerging technologies, customers are well informed, well connected with their peer groups and very active in their domain. Now customers have started playing dominant role in the value chain through co-creation of experience which enhances the value.The book can be divided into three distinct parts covering twelve chapters, highlighting future of competition and the role to be played by consumers, markets and companies. First six chapters develop the framework of consumers' role in the changing scenario. Early chapters give a brief account of the change that is taking place; how autonomy of companies in creating product value and satisfying consumers, is slowly and surely giving way to consumer-centric approach? How consumer and firm interact and co-create value, and how the cocreation experience becomes the very basis of value? The authors develop the co-creation experience framework in the subsequent chapters very cogently and lucidly. It goes like this, the co-creation experience depends highly on individuals. Each person's uniqueness affects co-creation process as well as co-creation experience. Dialogue, access, risk assessment and transparency (DART) are the building blocks of value co-creation process and companies use this to engage customer effectively as collaborator. In the domain of competition, co-creation experience plays the most important role in decision making. This process further gains momentum in the later chapters of first part as co-creation experience is shaped by dimensions such as choice of channels, options made available, quality of transaction and price-experience relationship. This experience will vary from consumer to consumer due to the different traits of individual. To ensure that the transaction between the consumer and the firm produces positive co-creation experience, the presence of an appropriate environment is imperative, authors develop this concept very carefully. This environments accommodate the heterogeneity of consumer and facilitate a variety of co-creation experience. In the present day world, emerging technology acts as an experience enabler, facilitating innovation in experience environment. With intense competition, sky high consumer expectation; consumer looks for uniqueness which is possible only through personalized co-creation experience. …