ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the main stakeholders of the company, why it is worth to co-create with them and how to connect and share data with them during this cooperation. Traditionally, a company created value for its customers through a one-way and sequential process: the company created the concept, designed the product or the offering and then manufactured, stocked and marketed it. Information-enabled collaboration helps companies to reduce costs across the entire value system. Sharing information between businesses is very complex, given that parties are independent but interdependent, which makes cooperation and coordination between them very complex. Today customers demand interactivity from their business counterparts, and the integration of traditional customer engagement activities, including processes, systems and technologies with emergent social media applications. Hence, it requires a complete transformation of how the firm communicates and shares information with its internal and/or external stakeholders.
