Creative Users

Being a product designer myself, I'm very interested in the design of products that exactly meet the needs of the user. Quite often I find the question of what users really need a hard one. But I seem to get some help from users themselves.
With the increasing use of internet, the role of the user has changed: from isolated to connected, from unaware to informed, from passive to active, as C.K. Prahalad and V. Ramaswamy argue in their latest book. According to these authors, consumers now seek to exercise their influence in every part of the business system and demand products and services that perfectly match their needs and values. “Armed with new tools and dissatisfied with available choices, consumers want to interact with firms and thereby co-create value”.
Users can be very creative in trying to find the products they need. And when they expect enough benefit, lead users even innovate themselves. This can be an important source of new ideas for innovating companies, as Eric von Hippel shows in his new book Democratizing Innovation.
Because users simply use products, they are a huge source of knowledge. And in our increasingly networked society they often share their knowledge and ideas freely with others, creating user-innovating communities.
So users/consumers can be creative, have important knowledge and are willing to share their ideas? Maybe it's time for designers and companies to look differently at the people that buy their products, not just as consuming buyers of products , but as valued partners in innovation and design. In this weblog I will call this new, active involvement of users in the creation of new products co-creation. And since we only seem to be at the beginning of this development, I would like to share ideas here on how designers, marketeers, market researchers, managers and users can give shape to co-creation. Simply put: How will this work?