The concept of co-creating value has numerous variants but, as explicated by C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy in their articles “Co-opting Customer Competence” and “The Co-Creation Connection,” it has a specific meaning. The co-creation paradigm is a consumer-centric view which contrasts with the traditional company-centric view on five points:

• The consumer is an integral part of the system for value creation, rather than being seen as outside that value chain
• The consumer can influence where, when, and how value is generated, rather than all control being located in the enterprise
• The consumer need not acknowledge industry boundaries in searching for value
• The consumer can compete with companies for value extraction
• There are multiple points of exchange where the consumer and the company can co-create value, rather than value being extracted from the customer for the company at a single point

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