Collaborative networked organisations and customer communities: value co-creation and co-innovation in the networking era

Strategic networks such as collaborative networked organisations (CNOs) and virtual customer communities (VCCs) show a high potential as drivers of value co-creation and co-innovation. Both look at the network structures as a source of jointly value creation and open innovation through access to new skills, knowledge, markets and technologies by sharing risk and integrating complementary competencies. This collaborative endeavour is able to enhance the adaptability and flexibility of CNOs and VCCs value creating systems in order to react in response to external drivers such as collaborative (business) opportunities. Strategic business networks are active entities continuously adapting to their environment in order to enhance their capabilities to respond to short-term business opportunities, and therefore allow their business ecosystems to follow the rhythm of industry dynamics, and customers’ changing needs and preferences. Value co-creation is the new trend in open-business models trying to integrate organisations’ competencies and involve customers’ individual preferences into network and community formations for the co-creation of the next level of value for products, services and experiences to be launched into the market. This article presents a literature review on value co-creation and co-innovation concepts and styles, and proposes a reference framework for creating interface networks, also known as ‘experience-centric networks’, as enablers for linking networked organisations and customer communities in order to support the establishment of sustainable user-driven and collaborative innovation networks.