Dynamic Value Chains - Visualizing and Optimizing Your Business
As a new vision of value chains, the Dynamic Value Chain is a uniform business architecture that applies to all industries and business types. In this book, the structure of the Dynamic Value Chain is defined and illustrated through case studies from large, well-known companies and smaller, regional businesses. New concepts are presented for the first time:
- A dual cycle business model underlies all types of businesses
- A company has one to many value chains that deliver value offerings to customers
- Every company has an innovation value chain
- Macro Performance Indicators can be used to optimize the business with multi-departmental initiatives.
With the value chain basics established, the foundations of competitive strategy from past business literature are reviewed and combined into three competitive strategies.
- A three-step process is described how to select the best competitive strategy for the Dynamic Value Chains in the business.
- Macro Performance Indicators are presented for each competitive strategy
- Advice is provided on how to optimize the specific Dynamic Value Chain elements to achieve competitive advantage and enduring profitability.
This book is provided to entrepreneurs, business practitioners, academics, and students to increase awareness of business constructs, and in the hope that additional research will be conducted to expand the abilities of the management team to visualize and optimize their business.
Entrepreneurs - Business leaders looking to start a new business or evolve an early stage venture can apply the architecture of the Dynamic Value Chain to:
- Visualize all the necessary components so appropriate costs can be applied in the business plan
- Determine a competitive strategy that matches their target market's customer perceived value
- Understand the areas that require greater investment to achieve profitability quickly
Business Executives - in an existing business, multiple value chains exist, which can be easily mapped to provide insights for optimization. Each value chain has its own customer demands for value production and an associated competitive strategy, so that the business leaders can:
- Determine an appropriate competitive strategy from a short list of three possibilities
- Identify business model elements where investment will increase value delivery to customers
- Select Macro Performance Indicators to align multi-departmental optimization efforts
- Visualize the innovation value chain that exists in all companies
Students and Academics - this book was also written as an education tool to present an easy-to-understand model that applies to all business types and industries. Numerous business model diagrams are provided along with case studies that illustrate:
- Make to Stock, Make to Order, Assemble to Order, and Engineer to Order value chains
- Retail, Reseller, and Distributor value chains; as well as the evolution of Supply Chains
- Three competitive strategies based on historical works with business optimization for each
For additional information and exchange of value chain ideas, please see the Business Visualization and Optimization research institute located at www.DynamicValueChains.com.
David N. Culbreth is a highly-experienced business practitioner, author and teacher living in Denver, Colorado. Early in his career, he worked with Fortune 500 companies in the automobile, aerospace, rubber, discrete manufacturing, and oil and gas industries to design their factories and plants using computer-aided design and 3D visualization. Mr. Culbreth has held management positions in national and international software and consulting services firms, including executive director, vice president, general manager and chief operations officer. In addition to successfully creating and running business units within large corporations, he has started up entrepreneurial businesses and organizations outside of the corporation. He was a board member of a national non-profit for seven years and served as chairman of the board. Since 2012, Mr. Culbreth has taught entrepreneurship, business planning and operations at Colorado University Boulder, Leeds School of Business. Today, in addition to his teaching, he has founded a private research institute to provide education and promote research related to the Dynamic Value Chain and Macro Performance Indicators (www.dynamicvaluechains.com).
