Co-creation as we understand it is a form of open innovation where ideas are openly shared and developed in a group of internal and external stakeholders. A basic requirement for co-creation is therefore trust and a willingness to share and improve knowledge in a group beyond one’s own division, organization, or even industry.
The term also has a different meaning in S-D Logic. Following this theory, the above explanations refer to ‘co-production’, whereas co-creation refers to “objects that are used with other objects or other people in context” and that value creation accordingly happens through resource integration to achieve outcomes, in a context designed by the customer.