Chapter 1: Introduction to Value Creating Systems

Box 1.1: Chapter 1 at a Glance

This chapter explains how strategy today is about designing effective offerings. The offerings articulate systems of interactions where actors co-create different forms of value. We outline the book’s argument — that this calls for a more contemporary strategy framework than that which conventional constructs such as “value chains” and thinking of firms as within given “industries” convey. In the strategy framework which this book is about, value creating systems (VCS), one attends to how value is created, not only by one party in the offering but by all parties in the offering. As opposed to the conventional view of value creation, where a supplier only produces and “offers” and a client only buys and “uses” in the view of value creation offered (sic!) by this book, the so-called “users” are taken to have more than one role, and centrally are also seen as value creators. They enter into an offering relationship only if they see the co-creation it entails as helping them to create value, for themselves, and with and for others.

We illustrate our argument with two cases. The first one contrasts Myspace and Facebook. The second case concerns the World Economic Forum (WEF).

This first chapter sets the scene for this book, which is about how designed co-created value, manifested in offerings, enables strategists to bring forth VCS fit for a networked world.