Product Co-Creation · a case from the co-creation research
A database nobody was asking for, a display company that had just lost a string of tenders, and a Swiss railway station: how the control room of the future was co-created against the grain.
Prof. dr. Régis Lemmens — Future of Selling research programme
A product nobody was asking for
The story begins with SAP holding a new product that had no obvious demand. SAP HANA, its in-memory database, could process enormous volumes of data in real time rather than in overnight batches. It was a genuine technical leap. The problem was that customers were not asking for it. A breakthrough that arrives ahead of demand presents its owner with a hard choice: wait for customers to articulate a need for it, or go out and actively find applications that prove what it can do.
SAP understood that waiting was the dangerous option. If it sat back until customers demanded real-time data processing, the competition would have closed the technological gap by the time the demand arrived, and SAP’s lead would be gone. The only way to convert an early technical advantage into a commercial one was to push — to go looking for applications that would showcase HANA before anyone was asking for it, and to create the demand rather than wait for it. This is a crucial and often overlooked precondition for Product Co-Creation: sometimes the supplier with the new capability has to seek out the partner, because the market has not yet realised the capability exists.
Why SAP went to Barco
SAP needed an application where the value of real-time, high-volume data processing would be undeniable. Barco was an ideal candidate. Barco builds control-room solutions — the large-scale visualisation systems through which operators monitor complex operations — and those solutions increasingly handled real-time video data. Real-time video means very high volumes of data that have to be processed and analysed fast. That is precisely the problem HANA was built to solve. If any application could make the case for HANA, a video-heavy control room was it.
So SAP approached Barco. And Barco, at first, was not interested. From Barco’s point of view there was no pressing reason to take on a major joint development with a database company. The existing control-room business was running, and a new technological venture is a cost and a risk before it is an opportunity. The party with the new capability was knocking; the party with the ideal application saw no reason to open the door. This is where many potential co-creations quietly die — not because the technical fit is wrong, but because one party has no felt need to act.
The timing that changed Barco’s mind
What changed was not SAP’s persuasion. It was Barco’s circumstances. Barco lost a few large tenders for control rooms. Those losses created exactly the felt need that had been missing. Suddenly Barco had a concrete reason to develop a new technological innovation that would differentiate its control-room offering and win back competitive ground. The capability SAP had been pushing now answered a problem Barco actually felt.
The lesson here is about timing, and it is uncomfortable for anyone who believes good co-creation is simply a matter of demonstrating a strong technical fit. The fit between HANA and Barco’s control rooms was just as strong before the lost tenders as after them. What was absent before, and present after, was Barco’s need to act. Product Co-Creation requires both a fit and a felt need on both sides — and the felt need often arrives on its own schedule, driven by events the other partner does not control. SAP’s contribution was to have been there, with the capability and the proposal already on the table, when Barco’s circumstances created the opening. The timing was right, and SAP had positioned itself to benefit from it.
Design first, sell second, build third
What the two companies did next is the most distinctive feature of the case. They did not immediately set out to develop the product together. They designed it — agreeing what the control room of the future should be, combining SAP’s real-time data engine with Barco’s visualisation — and then went out to sell it before they had built it. The full joint development came only after they had found a customer who actually wanted the capability.
This sequence is more disciplined than it first appears. Building a complex joint product on the assumption that customers will want it is enormously risky; both partners would be sinking development cost into a product that might not find a market. By designing the concept and then selling it first, SAP and Barco forced the market to validate the idea before they committed to building it. The eventual co-development would be anchored to a real customer with a real requirement, not to two suppliers’ shared optimism. For a co-creation born against the grain of demand, this design-then-sell-then-build order was a way of managing the risk that the demand still might not be there.
The Swiss railway station that made it real
The customer they found was a railway station project in Switzerland that wanted exactly this new capability — a control room able to process and visualise large volumes of real-time data. With a concrete customer and a concrete requirement in hand, SAP and Barco built the solution. And in doing so, the project did double duty. For Barco, the delivered system became the new control-room solution it had been looking for — the technological innovation that would differentiate its offering after the lost tenders. For SAP, the railway station became a real, working usage case for HANA: living proof, deployed at a real customer, that could inspire other customers to find their own applications for the database that nobody had been asking for.
This is the moment the co-creation pays off for both parties at once, and it is worth seeing clearly. The same project solved Barco’s competitive problem and SAP’s demand problem. Barco got a flagship product; SAP got a reference case that turned an abstract capability into a demonstrated application. Neither outcome was possible without the other party. Barco could not have built the real-time data processing; SAP could not have built the control room or reached the railway customer. The Swiss railway station is where the two halves became one product — and where each company got the thing it actually needed.
What the case teaches about Product Co-Creation
The first lesson is that the supplier with a new capability often has to create the demand, not wait for it. SAP could not afford to wait for customers to ask for HANA, because waiting would have surrendered its lead to the competition. Product Co-Creation is, in cases like this, the mechanism by which a supplier with an early advantage goes out and proves it — by finding a partner and an application that demonstrate the capability before the market knows to want it.
The second lesson is that fit is not enough; both partners need a felt need, and the timing matters. The technical fit between HANA and Barco’s control rooms was always there, but the co-creation only began when Barco’s lost tenders gave it a reason to act. A supplier proposing co-creation should understand that a strong fit may not be enough to move a partner who feels no pressure — and should be positioned, as SAP was, to move quickly when the partner’s circumstances change.
The third lesson is that designing and selling before building can de-risk an ambitious co-creation. SAP and Barco did not gamble development money on a product they hoped customers would want. They designed the concept, sold it to a real customer, and only then built it — letting the Swiss railway project anchor the joint development to a genuine requirement. For a product created ahead of demand, that sequence turned a speculative venture into a validated one, and produced a reference case that benefited both partners long after the first project was delivered.
About this case. This case is documented in the Future of Selling research programme led by Prof. dr. Régis Lemmens (Solvay Brussels School / AMS Antwerp Management School) and Prof. dr. Javier Marcos (Cranfield School of Management). SAP and Barco co-developed the control room of the future, built on the SAP HANA in-memory database, with an early flagship deployment at a Swiss railway station. It illustrates Product Co-Creation — the form of co-creation in which parties develop a new product together because neither can build it alone — including the dynamics of creating demand ahead of the market, the role of timing and felt need, and the discipline of designing and selling before building. Companion Product Co-Creation cases include two from Bekaert. To follow the research, visit futureofselling.eu.
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