Many companies are learning how to profit from customer involvement, including Fluevog Shoes, Jones Soda, and Threadless.com. The current craze for customer-generated advertising is just the tip of the iceburg. I recommend reading the entire article to see all the ways businesses are sharing with their customers and improving their business processes. For every business, co-creation can be a different experience from product design to packaging to advertising.

New York Times: To Charge Up Customers, Put Customers in Charge, 2006-Jun-18, by William C. Taylor

"Some of the ideas from customers are striking, but impossible to make," Mr. Fluevog said. What tends to work best, he explained, are intriguing twists on design themes that he and his colleagues are already exploring. "But even submissions we can’t make add to the stimulation," he added. "Our customers get more involved, and we get insights into who they are and what they’re doing. It’s better for both of us." …

Eric von Hippel, head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls this bottom-up phenomenon "lead-user innovation," … "This is not traditional market research — asking customers what they want. This is identifying what your most advanced users are already doing and understanding what their innovations mean for the future of your business."