The concept of co-creation is sweeping the the way products are being delivered to consumers. People who just aren’t satisfied being by-standers taking whatever manufacturers are giving them are turning to co-creation. People who buy things should have a say in what they are buying. They should have a say in the conceptualization and creation of the product. And that is what the Create My Chocolate allows you to do with, as the name suggests, chocolate bars.

Create My Chocolate starts the mouth salivation about 30 seconds after being on their site.

Designing your own style of chocolate bars starts with choosing a base, you then go ahead and choose your own toppings, from among various fruits, nuts, spices, décor and grains and then see your chocolate taking form in front of you. Sound tasty? 

Making it a great gift idea, you can also have a name printed on the chocolate. Full disclosure, Create My Chocolate is a friend of the company, as are many other co-creation companies. And with the code blanklabel you will get a massive $5 off your creation. We get nothing for plugging them, other than that we believe in the awesomeness of co-creation and Create My Chocolate. 

If you'd like to see us profile more co-creation companies, or just show you mad discounts, let us know. If you're a co-creation company, we should probably know about you so feel free to say hi.

Have you ever been to a store, checked out a product and thought that it would be better if it were designed differently? Now, if that’s what you feel often, here’s your way out—Shapeways. This new concept company takes co-creation to a new plane. The idea of co-creation itself is quite recent actually. When you are co-creating, you are basically telling the manufacturer what design you want in a product and they give you the very same design. Shapeways takes this one step further.

What Shapeways does is to allow you to build your own 3D model using software applications. Once your design is ready, you upload it onto their website and place an order to get it “printed”. Then, within 10-14 days of the order being placed, you will find a real version of your design shipped directly to your doorstep, true to the size and dimensions you had specified. You could even have the same colors you had designed and you have a choice of materials too.

Sounds amazing? It really is! Shapeways uses a digital printing technology that is able to bring out even the minutest details in the designs and convert them into real versions. In fact, there is a detail level of 0.2 mm, which is definitely quite elaborate.

This is the new wave of co-creation. Mass production is passé; now is the age of telling manufacturers what you want and getting it from them. That’s what Shapeways does for you. It carefully checks your 3D model and then with the materials and dimensions you choose, it creates a real version of the product for you.

You can design the products for free (you have to become a member of the website) but there is a payment for printing the design. However, this is a small cost to pay considering that you are seeing your creativity taking real shape right in front of you! And if you think you cannot create a design from scratch, there are various templates already placed here which you can use to customize to your needs.

There are various ways in which you can use the products that Shapeways builds out of your designs. You can choose to keep the product for yourself, or you can give it away to someone as a gift. You could directly enter their shipping address. Also, there’s a way to make money here. You could design products and sell them through the Shapeways Store. How’s that for a business opportunity now? It is not a wonder that this new co-creation trend is truly catching on.

There is to be said a trend of mass-customization coming that will forever change the relationship between consumers and producers. The value proposition it's offering is why would you get something the same as everyone else when you could just have it individually-made to your preferences. Mass-customization's competition is mass-production, and these are the three main reasons why it is still king:

1. People only want a limited amount of choice. And that's not to say consumer behavior won't change in the future, but consumers are fairly intolerant of the paradox of choice, which basically states that choice brings us happiness but too much choice makes decision-making miserable. Mass-customization companies have to invest a tremendous amount into customer-development and user empathy to understand what customers want to have choice in, and what they fundamentally want chosen for them.

2. Mass-customization in most cases is ineffectively positioned and priced. For mass-customization to be effectively communicated against mass-production it can be a Starbucks cup of coffee compared to a Dunkin', but it cannot be a whole coffee machine. There are mass-customization companies effectively building a pricing premium through branding and service, but it's the branding and service people want to pay extra for, not necessarily that it's customizable. Mass-customization ultimately still has to be a great value proposition to get scale.

3. Talking of scale, does anyone even know mass-customization exists? Mass-production is dominant because it has distribution, and inevitably this will take some years and a lot of dollars and mouths to spread awareness. To join the movement, there's a twitter hash-tag, #CCCR, which stands for Co-Creation Custom Revolution.

Here are some more thoughts in 60 seconds from NikeID's Joshua Young