Flexibility and innovation are crucial for companies to remain competitive in the digital age. However, companies’ innovation efforts are often focused on internal processes and proprietary platforms, which can lead to the development of redundant knowledge and ideas in any organisation. The integration of co-creation offers a way out by facilitating access to external resources such as external knowledge and ideas, which in turn can increase the effectiveness of the innovation process. Therefore, in this article we identify success factors for the use of co-creation platforms in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which play a significant role in remaining competitive in today’s business world. Through a hermeneutic literature review, opportunities, challenges and success factors are identified. The results serve as a guide for SMEs to implement and optimise co-creation platforms in order to improve their innovation processes and strengthen their competitiveness.