CoCreate

The competition has changed. It's about time to change the way you create products.

In a marketplace that's loaded with products, you need to get closer to your customer.

It's natural to believe that old formulas are the best. Here's one that's worked for years: Success in the marketplace results from high quality, a good price and fastest time-to-market. It's worked for years. So why change it? And product ideas? Well, they usually came from one expert at your company or a small group of specialists.

But this was yesterday's marketplace.

Today's marketplace is brimming with timely, high quality products, at good prices. Especially if you are competing in today's fast-paced high tech markets. Customers can choose from a wealth of offerings. So you need more than good products based on a few experts' point of view. It's time for a new formula: you must not only innovate but innovate more regularly. You have to take the luck out of product generation and build in processes that are reliable, continuously innovative and create superior customer value.

All of which means you don't have to change what you do, but you must change how you do it.

How do you get closer to your customers and know them better. To accomplish this you have to move away from developing products from one viewpoint. To succeed, to develop products with full potential, you need to involve everyone who is touched by your product in the early stage of development. This includes everyone from the design team, to outside suppliers and even the ultimate customer. Only when you know what your customers' real needs are and involve your suppliers in product generation --- then you get close to the full potential of your product.

Product creation must become what we call a CoCreative process, engaging people outside of the traditional design team, involving your customers, your suppliers and even the channel. Can you do all this without affecting your time to market, cost and quality?

Here's what we envision.

CoCreate. It's how to involve your best minds toward a common goal.

The best minds working together have the best chance of coming up with a better idea. Rough initial ideas go through iterations that are stimulated by the viewpoints of different experts. This creative process will bring any idea to a more advanced stage.

In order for such CoCreation to take place, everyone involved needs tools that create a shared space. Shared space is simply a common platform that's understood by all and utilizes a common language. And what better language can be there than a 3 dimensional model, an image that leaves little room for misinterpretation.

In the old world, a design might emanate from one source. There are inherent problems in this approach.

For example, a newly designed heart monitor was delivered to intensive care. The moment the nurse saw it, she knew the design was faulty: the power supply was located on the side she had to stand, blocking her way to the controls.

In a shared CoCreate environment, a user such as the nurse has a chance to add her perspective early in the design process, eliminating problems that could lead to product failure.

The CoCreative process. Sounds interesting, doesn't it?

The CoCreate environment. A shared sense of purpose.

To get the best ideas of the people who contribute to the product generation process, to move beyond the traditional development team and create a true CoCreative environment, four basic elements are needed.

• Empowering change.
• Exploring ideas.
• Access to knowledge and information.
• Management of people and processes.

To achieve this, CoCreate is promoting the evolution of a truly CoCreative infrastructure that will foster superior customer value-focused products.

Empowering Change and Exploring Ideas.

CoCreate tools allow your team incredible freedom to develop innovative products. They will incorporate valuable input resulting from intense CoCreation from multiple and multi-disciplined sources working together. What's more, the design team is able to test new thoughts without sacrificing design efficiency.

To achieve this, CoCreate features a unique design technology called dynamic modeling. It allows all team members to easily make design inputs and iterations irrespective of the sequence of modeling steps.

And our dynamic conferencing technology opens the door to continuous communication, model sharing, along with progress and discussion, no matter how geographically dispersed the team is. They are able to simultaneously yet individually view and control electronic product mock-ups and annotate valuable design alternatives.

Access to knowledge and information.

Much of an engineer's time ought to be spent using information, rather than locating and accessing it. CoCreate tools provide quick and efficient access to knowledge and information. This way, every member of the team can benefit from the knowledge and disciplines of others.

CoCreate's product data management technologies are key to accessing relevant know how and information about a design. This information can be published across networks and provides every member of the team the benefits of different areas of expertise, regardless of where team members are.

CoCreate's Advisor technology allows all design members access to specialized knowledge like manufacturing expertise. It provides interactive feedback on design considerations whether it's design for manufacturability, general design guidelines or impact on cost.

Management of people and processes.

CoCreation must be managed. After all, there comes a time when everyone's input has been weighed and decisions must be made. CoCreate systems let the core team manage the interactions and inputs and track work flow throughout the product development cycle, resulting in highly evolved products that are completed on-time.

A superior product emerges: yours.

When everyone who should be involved in the design process really is . . .

when the cost of change is low enough to stimulate the exploration of ideas .. .

when access to information and knowledge is thoroughly integrated . . .

when people and processes are properly managed. . .

then, superior products emerge.

Time to market, cost and quality will always remain the essential drivers for competitive product generation, but only the superior product will prevail.

Today there's a new company that understands the difference that a crowded marketplace represents. A company that does something about it.

CoCreate.