Co-creation and open innovation : common traits and differences

This paper aims to find the common traits and differences between co-creation and open innovation. Both terms, coined in the last ten years, are based upon theoretical and practical literature. The questions that this paper aims to solve are the following: do co-creation and open innovation have common traits? What is the difference between the two concepts? In order to answer these questions, literature from different scholars was reviewed to obtain a framework for the definition, the process and the types of each model. As a result of the review, there is evidence that both terms are conceptually different, because co-creation looks for the firm to change their business model to a customer-oriented one, while open innovation opens the model but remains product-oriented. However, the possibility exists for both concepts to overlap when using three forms of co-creation and open innovation, crowdsourcing, open source and virtual lead user communities (VLUCs), as a platform for knowledge sharing with users. These three typologies of co-creation and open innovation could make identifying the adopted strategy more difficult when it is unclear whether or not the company is applying the forms from a product-centered point of view or a user-centered point of view