Survival through Openness – How Traditional Industry could avoid the Fate of Print Media

The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to a theory of value co-creation by integrating a case observation and conceptual insights from literature that are concerned with co-creation phenomena. A value creation taxonomy is introduced as a reference model which is used to describe an ongoing paradigm shift from traditional industrial production towards Bottom-up economics. On this basis, a conceptual framework is derived for comparing how traditional value chain elements might be rearranged by organizations relying on value co-creation. The underlying research work also aims to apply the authors' framework in order to illustrate how completely new business models arise and how traditional (manufacturing) companies could be enabled to make use of value co-creation patterns observed in the 36 cases under consideration. Each case is employing its own distinct approach to value creation.