Co-Creation
Your Vision + Our Engineering. How our design-thinking and co-creation approach turns a partner’s vision into something buildable, and where co-creation fits in the larger process. The clearest single read on how I actually work.
Co-creation is the most distinctive thing about how I work and the most easily misunderstood. It does not mean asking customers what they want and then building it.
It means putting the team and the people they serve in the same room and structuring the collaboration so that something emerges that no one carried in alone. Most modern product practice gets as far as being user-centric. We map the journey, we write the stories, we stay close to the user. Co-creation takes the next step and makes the user a participant in the thinking rather than the subject of it. Done with structure, it produces empathy, shared understanding, and solutions with real impact. The structure is what makes it safe enough to try.
What I’ve made
My talk, “Co-Creation: The Key to Creativity, Engagement, and Impact”
How co-creation, combined with journey mapping, user stories, and a few critical-thought models (including command/consult/consensus and divergent/convergent thinking), unlocks empathy and shared understanding on product teams. See Talks.
Diverge, Then Converge (workshop)
The hands-on version. Techniques refined over fifteen years at DPL for helping a group ideate, test, and refine together instead of defaulting to the loudest voice or the first obvious answer.
“Roadmapping with Critical Thought”
Co-creating a roadmap with the team rather than handing one down. See the recorded talk on the Decision Making & Critical Thought page.
Helpful Sales & Marketing That’s Actually Helpful (2017)
My principles for business development as a give-first, genuinely helpful act, including no-cost proposals and recommending a competitor when you are not the right fit. Co-creation applied to the client relationship.
What I recommend
How Clients Buy
Tom McMakin and Doug Fletcher. The Seven Elements of the client’s buying journey. The clearest argument I know that selling expert services is itself an act of co-creation built on trust.
Winning the Professional Services Sale
Michael McLaughlin. A sales process where you and the client collaborate at every stage. Co-creation applied to the buying relationship itself.
Never Split the Difference
Chris Voss. A former FBI hostage negotiator’s approach to the conversations where the stakes are real. Sharp tools for the human side of any working session.
What Every BODY is Saying
Joe Navarro. Reading the room. Useful for anyone trying to facilitate honest collaboration rather than polite agreement.
Melissa Perri
Escaping the Build Trap; the Product Thinking community. A product leader I follow and recommend. Her work on outcomes over output is a natural fit for teams trying to co-create rather than just collect requirements.
More on my 2017 Innovator’s Reading List.
Run the smallest version: invite one actual customer into your next working session as a participant with a structured prompt, rather than as an interviewee. The shift in what surfaces is the whole point.