How do you create value? I make and sell

good soup for the peasants’ around

my castle

Experience

We’re all about experience.

They love our soup. We make sure it’s

salted, creamy, hot, and delivered in an impeccably clean

bowl.

How do they interact with your

product?

What’s their experience like?

In fact, we delight our customers through the experience we provide.

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.

For example, can they one day

create one type of experience?

But then, I’d have to be prepared to respond to their changing moods or desires.

And I can’t do that. Why not?

.

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.

Sales

Marketing

Research

Innovation

PR

Customer Service

HR

Retail

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?

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.

Community of AdvocatesMaybe 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?

Are any of those amateurs passionate and knowledgeable about your business?

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?

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 doWhat am I to do if these

customer hordes shop up at my castle, wizard?

GULP!

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?

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.

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)

presentation http://www.slideshare.net/soldierant/5-reputation-missteps-and-how-to-avoid-them