I wanted to wish you and your family a great New Year, lots of happiness and success.
Thank you for reading my articles on value creation. I hope you have joined my group in LinkedIn called the Value Creation Journal. You will find it useful.
Do keep in touch and let us create value together. The first issue of the Value Creation Journal should come out by the end of 2014.
Best regard,
Gautam Mahajan
Big Brother: Google, Apple and Microsoft
WILL VALUE DESTRUCTION ACE VALUE CREATION?
Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to Hal Varian, Chief Economist of Google give a talk on the economic impact of Google, and its futuristic thinking.
The Value Creation is immense. It includes social value creation, and things that are good for society. In countries like India, they also working on connectivity and infrastructure.
For the individual, there is a myriad of new apps such as Google Now. It gives you just the right information at just the right time. From knowing the weather before you start your day, to planning the best route to avoid traffic, or even checking your favourite team’s score while they’re playing, Google Now brings you the information you want, when you need it. You can also get assistance 24/7. It gives you relevant suggestions. There are Google books, Google stores. However, they say You are in control.
But are you really in control, or is Google in control of you? They have so much information about you, and so they are in control, though they try to make you feel in control.
Then there is Google Offers. Google’s Nexus phone, all tying you in to Google, through the exclusion of others like Apple/Mac or Microsoft. Not that these are behind. They all want to tie you up and stick to their products, and make it difficult for the non-savvy user to go from one system to another. Microsoft has free Xbox music on line, a cloud storage system, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS); they have bought Nokia, and have their own phone and mobile system. Apple is everywhere, from phones to pads, to laptops; from control centres to airdrops, to smarter multitasking and locational maps, information and storage of data, in stores, in music. All things that impact you on a daily basis. A form of Value Creation
Is big brother watching you? These big guys know your location, your preferences, when you like to work and on what. The list is endless. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in Big Apple, Big Google, Big Brother says that one way to reduce the big brother data is to have short logs.
To me, the big brother syndrome and the fact they want me to be captive to them is a big Value Destroyer. We are so captivated by the Value Ceation that we forget we are captives. And this Value destruction could cause the downfall of all the great value that is being created supposedly for us but in reality for the companies!
What is your take on it?
Hi Gautam
I have read through your various posts on value creation on CustomerThink. Unless I missed it, nowhere did you actually define what ‘value’ is, how you identify it and how you measure it.
I would be interested to your answers to the following (paired) questions.
What exactly is value? How does it differ from ‘worth’?
How is value created? How do you know?
How do you measure value? What units is it measured in?
Graham Hill
@grahamhill
Value is what you pay versus what you get. It is what the worth of a product or a service is to you
Value is created generally by easier methods. When someone goes the extra step, value is created…so if a call center solves your problem and flags it as a systemic problem, and the company ensures the problem does not happen again, then value is created. Or when your secretary ensures the receptionist knows a guest is coming, and when the guest comes the receptionist says, we were expecting you, Can I show you to the right room? Instead of saying who are you, why have you come, do you have an appointment
You will know when value is created. It is apparent
You measure customer Value Added by a term called Customer Value Added. First measure Customer Value, and communicate where you are good, and improve where you are poor versus competition
Ray Kordupleski introduced the term Customer Value Added which is the ratio of the Value your company creates for its customer divided by the value your competition creates for its competition. CVA correlates to loyalty, market share and profits
Value is measured through market research, and the questionnaire is based on an indepth analysis of the segment/geography after understanding the customer’s waterfall of needs and building attribute trees, again enunciated by Ray
The customer is owned by everyone in the organisation and the Customer Value market research data has to be shared internally with all departments and they should be involved in action steps
Gautam Mahajan, President
Total Customer Value Foundation
Inter-Link India
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