Value Network - Fjeldstad and Stabells Value Networks

Fjeldstad and Stabells Value Networks

Fjeldstad and Stabell presents a framework for "value configurations" in which a "Value network" is one of two alternatives to Michael Porter's Value Chains (the other being the Value shop configuration).

F&S's value networks consists of these components:

• A set of customers.
• Some service the customers all use, and enables interaction between the customers.
• Some organization that provides the service.
• A set of contracts that enables access to the service.

An obvious example of a value network is the network formed by phone users. The phone company provides a service, users enter a contract with the phone company and immediately has access to all the value network of other customers of the phone company.

Another less obvious example is a car insurance company: The company provides car insurance. The customers gains access to the roads and can do their thing and interact in various ways while being exposed to limited risk. The insurance policies represent the contracts, the internal processes of the insurance company the service provisioning.

Unfortunately F&S and Christensen's concepts both address the same issue; the conceptual understanding of how a company understands itself and its value creation process, but they are not identical. Christensen's value networks address the relation between a company and its suppliers and the requirements posed by the customers, and how these interact when defining what represents value in the product that is produced.

Fjeldstad & Stabell's value networks is a configuration which emphasize that the value being created is between customers when they interact facilitated by the value networks. This represents a very different perspective from Christensen's but confusingly also one that is applicable in many of the same situations as Christensen's.