Co-construction

Stakeholder engagement primer: 4. Options for engagement

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_stakeholder-engagement_4

What options are available to researchers for including stakeholders in a research project in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the problem, provide ideas about addressing it and help the research to support policy or practice change? Can different stakeholders be included in different ways? Can the same group of stakeholders participate in different ways in various aspects of the research? What obligations do researchers have to participating stakeholders over the course of that project?

It can be useful to consider 5 ways in which researchers can include stakeholders in a project:

1. Inform:
Researchers provide stakeholders with balanced and objective information to assist them in understanding the research.

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Co-creation, co-design, co-production, co-construction: Same or different?

By Allison Metz

Alison Metz
Allison Metz (biography)

A key topic across disciplines is the authentic engagement and participation of key stakeholders in developing and guiding innovations to solve problems.  Complex systems consist of dense webs of relationships where individual stakeholders self-organize through interactions.  Research demonstrates that successful uptake of innovations requires genuine and meaningful interaction among researchers, service providers, policy makers, consumers, and other key stakeholders. Implementation efforts must address the various needs of these stakeholders.  However, these efforts are described differently across disciplines and contexts – co-design, co-production, co-creation, and co-construction.

Developing consensus on terminology and meanings will facilitate future research and application of “co” concepts.  For example, co-design is often used in health to describe processes that put users and communities at the heart of service design. Co-production is often discussed in socio-environmental science to allow users to participate in administration and delivery.  Co-creation is often used in business to describe the involvement of customers in developing products and processes. 

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