Co-creation in design: how the UK company Own Label combines openness and ownership to manage talent

Abstract

Purpose

This case study of a fashion-design company aims to show how a co-creation initiative produces competitive advantage by nurturing creativity, expanding the company’s innovation capabilities and enabling it to engage with both taste-making customers and designers from anywhere in the world.

Design/methodology/approach

In 2009, Fronteer Strategy, a Netherlands-based market-analysis firm published a conceptual framework for identifying specifically how a firm’s processes and initiatives employ co-creation. This case looks at how this theoretical framework compares with the actual complexities of the co-creation process developed by Own Label.

Findings

Own Label’s co-creation approach is a hybrid model that utilizes more than one type of co-creation across its fashion-design process.

Practical implications

What makes co-creation in design-intensive industries a disruptive approach is the democratization of the process by which design choices are made.

Originality/value

Own Label is utilizing its hybrid models of co-creation in order to strategically position its self in niche markets, adapt faster to trends, as well as to be a design leader.

Citation

Roser, T., DeFillippi, R. and Goga Cooke, J. (2014), "Co-creation in design: how the UK company Own Label combines openness and ownership to manage talent", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 42 No. 5, pp. 34-40. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-07-2014-0050