4 Personal Thoughts to Help You Create Value in the Digital Age

These last couple of months have been extraordinary for me. I’ve gone through a lot of interesting experiences with customers and my book on value creation is generating a lot of enthusiasm among colleagues and friends. It makes me so happy that people are taking inspiration from my personal journey and that companies are reconsidering their practices to create better value for their customers.

In this blog I want to shortly summarize my personal invitation to all of you, to become a sparkle of transformation for value creation at your own company.

If you would like to hear more, do join me at the AE Keynote: Value Creation in the Digital Age on May 16 in Ghent.

1. Develop a shared purpose

A lot of people are starting to understand that we are reaching the limits of the money-making model of traditional economics. The lack of purpose knocks on the door of individuals and corporations. People are looking for jobs that fit their purpose in life. Enterprises understand that they need to pursue a broader ecosystem purpose that goes far beyond generating profit exclusively for their own organization.

2. Co-create value with customers and partners

To fulfill their shared purpose, companies realize that they need to reinvent their ways to create value. Instead of pushing products that are invented internally, we need to look for better ways to connect the ‘outside’ needs of our customers with the ‘inside’ capabilities of our company. We need to open ourselves for more agile and co-creative ways of improving products and services. We need to bring together customers, partners and employees to co-create new innovative products and services.

3. Shape your organization structures for value creation

To deliver these high value products and services, a lot of organizations understand that they also need to adapt their organizational models. They understand that they cannot create superior customer value, if they continue to operate from hierarchical organization models based on functional silo departments. They bring together value creation teams that operate close to the market and integrate all of the competences needed to deliver outstanding value to the customer.

4. Think eco-system, not ego-system

From an individual perspective, I believe we also need to further develop our leadership skills by changing the level of awareness from which we operate. As described by Otto Scharmer in his book on leading from the emerging future:

“Our society must move from ego-system to eco-system economics. This requires that we shift from ego-system silos to eco-system awareness that considers others and includes the whole.”

To become better change makers for value creation, I believe we need to develop our capacity to see and act from the whole to better connect to emerging possibilities.

Let’s all work together to transform our company’s strategies, processes and organization models for better value creation! Let’s make value creation great again!

Johan Merckx is sharing his personal story on value creation at our AE Keynote: Value Creation in the Digital Age on May 16 in Ghent. The session is filled with lots of practical examples, including a case from Attentia, told by Attentia Product Director Stijn Verstraete. Register for the AE Keynote here.