TY - JOUR T1 - Components of Co-creation JF - Open Source Business Resource Y1 - 2009 A1 - Stephen Allen A1 - Tony Bailetti A1 - Stoyan Tanev AB - Value co-creation is an emerging innovation, marketing and business paradigm describing how customers and users are seen as active participants in the design of personalized products, services and experiences. Often this participation is organised via the Internet to enable the opportunity for customers to integrate their knowledge, experience and skills into existing, modified or entirely new market offerings reflecting their personal preferences, needs and contexts. There is a growing body of literature dedicated to the discussion of value co-creation frameworks, mechanisms and processes. However, these typically focus on the study, discussion and analysis of a small number of cases using deep, ethnographic description of their practices aiming at conceptualization and categorization of the different types of interactions between end users, the firm and the value network. Although useful, such an approach misses the advantages of an empirically driven quantitative approach that benefits from larger size samples and is more appropriate for theory building through the development and testing of hypotheses. It is important, therefore, to seek the development of a research methodology that combines the benefits of both qualitative and quantitative research approaches for studying the nature of value co-creation. The article provides a first attempt to identify the main research steps of such a methodology. It provides some preliminary results on the key components of value co-creation between firms and end customers based on the application of web search and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) techniques. The analysis of these preliminary results is then used as an opportunity to identify a number of research questions to be addressed in future research. The emerging research questions follow the inner logic of the value co-creation phenomenon as well as the nature of the results reported in this article. The specific nature of the results was found to be suitable for the application of small-N techniques such as the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) technique which combines the advantages of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. One of the main contributions of this article is to suggest and explore the possibility for using the QCA technique in future research on value co-creation. PB - Talent First Network CY - Ottawa UR - http://timreview.ca/article/301 IS - November 2009 U1 - Carleton University Stephen Allen is an Ottawa-based technology expert and manager with more than 20 years of experience in the design and development of hardware and software products and services. In 2008 he has completed the Technology Innovation Management program in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University. Stephen is very much interested in the design and development of value co-creation platforms. This article represents some of the results of Stephen Allen's M.A.Sc. Thesis in Technology Innovation Management titled "An empirical study of the components of value co-creation". U2 - Carleton University Tony Bailetti holds a faculty appointment in both the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering and the Eric Sprott School of Business at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Professor Bailetti is the Director of Ontario's Talent First Network and the Executive Director of Coral CEA. He is responsible for Lead to Win. U3 - University of Southern Denmark Stoyan Tanev is Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Civil Engineering at the University of Southern Denmark. He is part of the Integrative Innovation Management Unit, a research group that operates across the faculties of social sciences and engineering. Stoyan had a similar position in the Technology Innovation Management Program in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University and he worked for several years as an optical designer in the Ottawa high tech industry. Stoyan has a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Physics, a M.Eng. in Technology Innovation Management, and a M.A.. His main research interests are: design and development of value co-creation platforms, value co-creation business models, value co-creation platforms for user-driven innovation, and technological infrastructures enabling value co-creation oriented business processes. He is also interested in the philosophy of technology, business ethics, and general epistemological issues at the interface of philosophy of religion and physics. ER -