Cases
B2B firms in the research
Cases from across both waves of the research, drawn from interviews, fieldwork, and workshops with B2B firms in Europe and beyond.
Over sixteen years the research programme has documented dozens of cases. A selection is written up here. More will be added as cases are progressively prepared for publication; some are documented in greater depth in the book From Selling to Co-Creating, the HBR article Entrepreneurial Selling, or the working paper From Value Selling to Value Engineering.
Cases from the co-creation wave · 2009–2018
The first wave of the research identified four distinct forms of co-creation between B2B suppliers and their customers. They are grouped here by form. Each case links to a full write-up.
Product co-creation
Supplier and customer develop a new product — or a new application of one — together, because neither could specify the working result alone.
Bekaert and the carding spike
Textile manufacturing · product co-creation
A dormant university patent, a customer willing to risk a live production line, and a sales force that “practically lived at the customer.” The test lifted throughput twenty per cent and surfaced benefits neither party had predicted — the signature of genuine product co-creation.
Bekaert and the concrete that reinforces itself
Construction · product co-creation
A second Bekaert case, in a different industry. Steel-fibre concrete reinforcement (Dramix) is co-developed into each customer’s structure and practice with architects and engineers — the milder, everyday form of product co-creation, where the unit co-created is the application, not the product.
SAP, Barco, and the control room of the future
Enterprise technology · product co-creation
A database nobody was asking for, a display company that had just lost a string of tenders, and a Swiss railway station. The case shows co-creation born against the grain of demand — and the discipline of designing and selling the product before building it.
Eco-system co-creation
Supplier and customer deliberately bring a third party from their wider ecosystem into the room, because the solution they need cannot be built by the two of them alone.
Actemium and the start-ups in the room
Industrial automation · eco-system co-creation
A systems integrator turns itself into a broker between start-ups and its own customers. Its salespeople screen start-ups against deep knowledge of their customers’ operations, then convene the three-way conversation in which a new project is co-created. The supplier’s asset is its relationships, not its products.
CGI’s SPARK centres and the technologies on display
IT services · eco-system co-creation
The innovation centres were never showcases for CGI’s own products — the technologies on display came from its partners. Read in the eco-system frame, SPARK is the institutionalised version of Actemium’s brokering: a permanent, funded venue for convening the ecosystem and the customer.
Strategic co-creation
The supplier helps the customer develop their own vision and strategy — the direction from which all the customer’s future needs will flow.
MLP and the customer’s career
Financial services · strategic co-creation
A German brokerage co-creates something far larger than a financial plan: the client’s professional life. By helping young professionals build their careers, MLP is present at the formation of the need, not merely at its satisfaction — a position no product seller can reach.
Salomon FoodWorld and the secret code of dishes
Food & hospitality · strategic co-creation
A meat producer stops selling meat and starts co-creating its customers’ menus, using a neuromarketing method called the Culinary Code. The deepest moat a commodity supplier can build is to become co-author of the customer’s strategy. (Previously filed under experience co-creation; the fuller case shows it is strategic.)
Experience co-creation
The supplier charges for the outcome rather than the product, which binds it to co-creating a continuously excellent experience — because it is paid only while the customer keeps succeeding.
Rolls-Royce and the power by the hour
Aerospace · experience co-creation
When an airline pays by the operating hour rather than buying the engine, supplier and customer are locked into improving the engine’s performance together. The same logic — revenue tied to the customer’s ongoing success — underpins the modern customer success manager.
Cases from the value engineering wave · 2022–present
delaware and the Gentil Organisateur
IT consulting · orchestrating transformation
A consulting firm stops selling software implementations and starts orchestrating change. Its salespeople become Gentil Organisateurs — friendly hosts who bring stakeholders together, translate between them, and share the customer’s risk through a bonus-malus contract. The case shows what enterprise B2B selling looks like once the transactional model has stopped working.
Robovision and selling a future nobody can predict
AI platforms · selling a capability, not a solution
A decade ago Robovision sold a defined solution against a fixed roadmap. Today it sells a capability for a future neither it nor its customer can yet describe. The case explores what happens to the salesperson when the product becomes a platform, the relationship becomes co-creation, and the seller must become a visionary the founder cannot easily clone.
The Layered Business Case
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT · Layered Business Case Example
The layered business case is a key result of our current research. It helps salespeople show the complete value of their proposition across 5 layers. This case illustrates how to create a business case focused on employee well-being.
Tony Chocolonely and selling sustainable products in difficult times.
FOOD · selling sustainability
When markets are unstable, customers focus on economic benefits over ideological ones. That’s what many companies are saying. How does Tony’s Chocolonely manage this with their Open Chain proposal aimed at B2B customers? And what can a supplier like Kaneka, whose compostable bioplastic keeps stalling in the price negotiation, learn from them? The case compares the two propositions across seven dimensions and shows why the better product wins by being positioned and structured, not by being better.
Circl
Modular construction · layered business case
A Belgian modular construction company building circular, bioregional housing. The case has been used to illustrate how the Layered Business Case works in practice when the value being argued spans financial, regulatory, environmental, and community dimensions simultaneously. The customer-side coalition includes investors, regulators, local authorities, and end residents — each weighting a different layer of the case.
Detailed case study to be developed.
More cases will be added as the research produces them, and as existing cases are written up for publication.
Future Of Selling 