2. How do you create value? I make and sell good soup for the peasants’ around my castle

3. How do they interact with your product? What’s their experience like? We’re all about experience. In fact, we delight our customers through the experience we provide. They love our soup. We make sure it’s salted, creamy, hot, and delivered in an impeccably clean bowl. Experience

4. For example, can they one day create one type of experience? Do they get to create their own experience? Then come back the next time around and create a different one. You know, depending on mood, context or circumstances.

5. But then, I’d have to be prepared to respond to their changing moods or desires. And I can’t do that. Why not?

6. Because our soup servers would not know what to do with their requests. They are professional sloshers trained to serve four hundred peasants an hour, not soup solution agents. My cook is equipped to cook leek and potato soup in 400-gallon cauldrons. He’s not in the tapas business. That’s why it’s so cheap and peasants can afford it. .

7. What if customers themselves did some of that work of personalizing your products or services to their own need? Could customers become part of your value chain? Sales Marketing Retail Research HR Innovation Customer Service PR

8. That’s a funny thought. But these guys are peasants. They just consume our stuff. What do they know about designing, making, marketing or selling our product? We’re professionals of the soup business here.

9. Are any of those amateurs passionate and knowledgeable about your business? Community of Advocates Maybe even more passionate than you and the other managers? Could you channel the customers energy and get it to work for you maybe like in co-creation?

10. Perhaps, I suppose, maybe. We have a few soup freaks out there who gather at night to talk about soup. Some of them even make experimental batches, with weird new ingredients like cauliflower and fish. What’s this thing you’re leading me to, wizard?

11. I am not leading you anywhere. It is for you to discover your own path. But there are forces in the forest you may not yet recognize. Armies of customers coming to you with new expectations. Won’t I sell them leek and potato soup and send them on their way, as I always do What am I to do if these customer hordes shop up at my castle, wizard? GULP!

12. This time, you may have to do a bit more. Engage them into building the meal with you. Maybe invite them into your kitchen and let them cook for themselves. Who knows?

13. This is enough for now, wizard. My head spins. I’m disturbed by those visions of customers designing their own value propositions and becoming part of my value chain. I’m just a manager trying to sell soup. Let me catch my breath.

14. My name is Michael Batistich I’m a freelance strategist @ Amplify Innovation My blog The Social Business Feed: http://michaelbatistich.com/ Twitter: @michaelbatistic Credit: I would like to acknowledge the work of Francis Gouillart who I have ruthlessly stolen this story from. The original story can be found on his blog The Co-creation Effect http://francisgouillart.com/wordpress/?p=731. I would like to thank Francis for sharing his brilliant insights and ideas. Hopefully this remix will help spread the word and build on his work. Stickmen images have been borrowed from Bryce Glass’s 5 Reputation Missteps (And how to avoid them) presentationhttp://www.slideshare.net/soldierant/5-reputation-missteps-and-how-to-avoid-them