Paper info

Value Innovation In Business Markets: Re-Conceiving Industry Models

Koen Vandenbempt, Liselore Berghman and Paul Matthyssens

The paper was published at the 19th IMP-conference in Lugano, Switzerland in 2003.

The industrial marketing as well as the strategic management literature stress the importance of innovation in order to create/sustain competitive advantage and to rejuvenate the business. In this paper, we focus on the construct ?value innovation? within the broad field of innovation studies. We relate value innovation to a re-conceptualization of the supply chain of an industry. It involves a redefinition of a business whereby roles taken up by different firms and relationships among firms are ?redesigned?. In line with Christensen et al. (2002), our research focuses on efforts to create significant growth by creating new markets and new ways of competing (as such, we do not focus on growth through product/technology innovation). This paper is a first effort to operationalize the ?value innovation? construct within the context of specific business-to-business markets. The purpose of the research is to create a mid-range theory on value innovation strategies in business markets. Starting from traditional ways of value creation, the study aims at revealing different types of value innovation undertaken by industry participants and the drivers, barriers and success factors involved. So far, the study has framed value innovation initiatives within the existing industry contexts and managerial frames (?industry logic?) and identified drivers/enablers and barriers for the process of value innovation. The analysis of the qualitative data generated by a thorough interpretive methodology led to the formulation of propositions with respect to marketing management and knowledge management to be tested in further quantitative and qualitative research.In the following sections we (a) underpin our conceptual frames, (b) clarify our methodology and research design, (c) discuss the findings, and (d) build propositions.