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India’s Reliance Entertainment has announced a strategic investment in US crowdsourcing outfit Talenthouse, and the two companies have established a co-creation joint venture, Talenthouse India, a creative collaboration platform with artists across films, fashion, music, photography and art, says Mark Terry. The JV will focus on nurturing fresh talent in India and provide opportunities for collaboration in the Southeast Asia region.

Honda’s Dream Factory and The Guardian have launched an initiative to find the UK’s cultural engineers of the future. And the Honda Dream Factory Project is about innovation, good ideas and frontier-style discovery – the cultural engineers don’t just dream, they do, the partners say.

Lego has joined forces with Japanese open innovation outfit Cuusoo System, to launch the Lego Cuusoo co-creation platform aimed at getting consumers to submit ideas for new Lego products.

By Maria Stadtmueller. Companies aiming to engage consumers in co-creation campaigns face a number of challenges, according to a new report, How Brands Co-Create Value With Customers, from eMarketer.

Management can be slow to accept user-generated content, warns the research firm, and even when they do take the leap, they often limit their collaborative initiatives to customers, when involving other stakeholders could create more value.

Co-creation has gone intimate. Australian underwear brand Bonds wants consumers to create their own undies as part of the Feel The Colour campaign to promote its new Mesh and Microfibre Hipsters. Wannabe lingerie designers can upload an image they think would make a great undercover design via their Facebook accounts, or by using the Instagram app on their iPhones.

eYeka, Promise, PRTM, Knowledge Kinetics, Treehouse Logic, Gotham, as well as thought leaders including Francis Gouillart, have joined forces to launch the Co-Creation Forum, a North America-based initiative aimed at promoting best practice and stimulating thought-leadership among co-creation practitioners, communities and businesses.

By Steve Mullins. Konstantin Pinaev is passionate about co-creation. That’s not surprising given that he’s the head of co-creation at Thinktank International. It’s a newly created position for the market research firm, and Pinaev may well be the first person in the UK to have earned that title. And he plans to use it to bring more creativity to the research discipline.

By Mark Terry. New World is on the look-out for a brand ambassador to take over its Twitter and Facebook channels, as the Face of New World campaign aims to craft a hipper image for the home appliance brand.