User Voice and Democracy in Value Creation: Integrating Competences with Innovation Development

The dynamics of capitalism precipitates mobilization of communitarian dimensions to ensure mutual sharing of social knowledge. Though consumers are complex and fragmented, this paper attempts to shift market hegemony to them. Reviewing the works of neo-Marxist economics, Kotlerite' doctrine, Fordism and post-Fordism, Foucault, and post-Maussian socio-economic theories, the paper proposed an indiscriminate conceptual framework of user collaboration that suggests political form of power involving behavioural change that emphasizes effective corporate use of consumer labour and flattened organizational structures, especially with the diffusion of Web-based collaboration. The use of IT to extract economic values from users' creativity provides unparalleled democracy, self-fulfilment, and cost-effectiveness. To a large extent, the paper argued that co-creationist capitalism is an instrument of customer empowerment and corporate power of building competitive advantage when market power resides in immaterial and symbolic labour. Therefore, the paper concluded that socio-cultural and affective values provide key success factor (KSF) in value proposition and value creation when extended enterprise is built. The paper advised management to recast its philosophy to stimulate freeing consumer labour. Introduction Contemporary organizations support consumer-produced outputs or ethical surplus (Arvidsson, 2008) resulting from genuine fulfilment, community and opportunity for unrepressed indulgence. Such firms are fast in re-inspecting and re-tooling their corporate policies on innovation to reflect mobilization of communitarian dimensions (Oudshoorn et al, 2004). They place consumers on a new pedestal; serving in both operational and innovational value creation as if he is under developer's control. Developers learn and integrate the fabrics of users' life-worlds into the decision-making process (Ogawa and Pillar, 2006) to provide reflective commonalities that permit profitability, functionality (Saastamoinen et al, 2007) and reduce risks of consumer behaviour as well as cultural, symbolic and affective benefits for users (Cova and Dalli, 2009). Call it networks, collaboration, alliance, collective RD using firm's skills to stimulate customer creativity in a holy collaborative network and to synchronize it with core competencies to build competitive advantage (Kotier and Keller, 2009). Markets are re-conceptualized from the mundane exchanges to buzzing and vibrant communication hives, where consumers' experiences, special competences and skills are used to co-create successful innovations (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2000). This debunks the erstwhile political power of domination over customers as markets move to philosophies of self-shaping of lives, tribal culture, and do-it or sell-it-yourself (Zwick et al, 2008; Cova and Dalli, 2009; Schuen, 2008). Firms, including some in Africa, for the first time in the history of industrial age, attempt to align inflexible mode of production to complex and fragmented markets. This new thought demands bottom-up approach; co-creating with resourceful consumer subjects, especially those willing to serve as operant resources in the entire value-creation (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Studies (e.g.; Berthon et al, 2004; Oudshoorn et al, 2004) show the empirical correlation between the success of value-creation processes and the mobilization and expropriation of external but invisible affective, social and emotional relations of empowered, entrepreneurial and liberated consumer subjects. …