I had a great conversation with two leaders in the Customer Value field, Ray Kordupleski, the father of Customer Value Management, and a professor at the University of Montana; and with Bob Thompson, President of CustomerThink.
Bob stated that many aspects of Value Creation are being taught in business schools. Topics like innovation and differentiation are examples. But no single B School teaches Value Creation as a discipline. Value Creation will bring together a whole new thinking and make MBA’s escape from being just good managers, good administrators and efficiency experts. This is why companies land up with few Value Creators.
Ray told me that business leaders want to win, they want to be the best (generally in creating shareholder wealth). To do this they have to attract and retain the best employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and be seen the best with government and society. How do they do this? They have to create value across the organisation and for the customers and for society. They have to do this holistically and as a discipline. Then alone, they will be the best in creating shareholder wealth. To be effective, business leaders must understand competition and the value they create, and be better than them.
Ray went on to say that business leaders need to lose sleep over customers as much as they do over profits. And if they do this, they will wake up to Creating Value as a mantra.
Moshe Davidow of Service2Profit and the Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo of Israel and Colin Shaw of Beyond Philosophy felt we need a Value Creation seminar with the world’s best exponents in the field. What do you think?
