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This paper examines how firms in emerging economies implement value co-creation from the perspectives of harvesting innovation and planting innovation. Due to these firms' relative financial and managerial disadvantages, they must focus on the balance between innovation efforts and cash flows to ensure survival and growth. Employing the harvesting and planting categorisations enables examination of value co-creation practices for both the short and long term. Harvesting innovation seeks commercial products using recent discoveries (i.e., reaping the bounty of previous efforts); planting innovation pursues technological leap with the objective to produce the sources of future products (i.e., sowing the seeds of tomorrow's innovations). A theoretical framework of value co-creation for the two types of innovation for firms in emerging economies is proposed with a focus on the reasons and mechanisms for these firms to actively co-create value with various participants, including end consumers, customers, and government.