3. THE CO-CREATION APPROACH

Open innovation is a concept introduced by Henry Chesbrough, who defines it as “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. It assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market”.

In this framework, the involvement of relevant stakeholders of different areas for the sustainable design is a key priority in every activity sector. Their engagement leads to improvements for sustainable design in line with their preferences, attitudes, and feelings.

The co-creation approach supposes a multi-stakeholder engagement to carry out innovation projects that follow the principles of open innovation and focus on real-life experimentation to co-ideate, test, and validate novel solutions. Open innovation involves external stakeholders, mainly users or consumers, making them co-participate in the innovation process.

To this aim, several participatory techniques can be used. Some examples of this techniques are:

• Surveys
• Semi-structured interviews
• Focus Group
• Co-creative workshops.
• Prototype Testing Plan.
• Empathy map

Workshops developed in co-creation processes. Source: EuroVértice workshops

The goal of the method is to bring together partners, stakeholders, and end-users to co-create solutions in a couple of hours. It is composed of four co-creative phases: Co-analysis, Co-design, Co-evaluation, and Co-implementation.

This is clearly connected with the Sustainable design as in line to be successful in the future consumption, the stakeholders should be engaged from the very beginning.

In addition, it is important to remark that we live in the time with citizen are more aware about environmental aspects than any other time in history. Consumers start acquiring products and services while also considering sustainability as an important aspect. This phenomenon is expected to growth. Therefore, to understand consumers desires and to adapt practices for them is a must for companies. Consumers have the key of the industries evolution and to move them to a more sustainable behaviour.