Abstract
It is a matter of great honour that five board members of the Journal of Creating Value are speakers at the e-World Marketing Summit: Phil Kotler, Luiz Moutinho, Jag Sheth, V. Kumar and Gautam Mahajan on 6–7 November 2020.
The 3rd Global Conference on Creating Value was conducted electronically on 2–3 June 2020 with an American version, European and Asian version. Martin Calnan, Martijn Rademakers and Gautam Mahajan were co-Chairs.
Gautam Mahajan spoke at Peru at the CAME and the Norbert Wiener PostGrad School on 2 July 2020.
SAGE Publications conducted two webinars to promote the special issues:
Gautam Mahajan is the keynote speaker at the International Academic Forum’s conference on Valuing Value (Global Innovation and Value Summit) on 6 November 2020 (subsequently postponed). Gautam Mahajan key noted that day at the IAFOR conference on business and public policy talking about value creation during the times of crisis. Philip Sugai and Joseph Haldane, both board members, are the conference Chairs.
Also, a Creating Value Forum has started in Japan under the Chairmanship of Professor Youji Kohda. Another one has started in the USA with Joe Yacura as Chair and Bill Bigler as co-Chair.
The journal continues its affiliations. We have renewed our affiliation with the Social Value International. A brief description is as follows.
Social Value International is the global network focused on social impact and social value. Our members share a common goal: ‘To change the way society accounts for value’.
All too often key decisions about resources and policies are made using a limited economic concept of value, which fails to consider important effects on people and the environment. As the gap between rich and poor increases and the effects of climate change become more apparent, our work has never been more urgent.
Social Value International works with its members to embed core principles for social value measurement and analysis, to refine and share practice, and to build a powerful movement of like-minded people to influence policy. This pioneering community contains members from 45 countries, drawn from a huge range of different sectors and disciplines. Their goal at Social Value International is to support, connect and represent its members through training, knowledge-sharing and networking. Social Value International is much more than a professional network. Together, we are building a movement for change.
Other affiliations are with creating value centres and schools described as follows:
Kobe University Value School, Kobe, Japan. Creating Value School at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan. Customer Value and Sales Research Center at Aalborg University Business School, Aalborg Øst, Denmark. Center for Social Value Creation at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, MD, USA.
Descriptions of these institutions are given in the following sections. Nima Farschi, the Director of the Center for Social Value Creation (CSVC) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, coordinates the interactions between the various centres. He organized a web meet on 7 October 2020.
Kobe University Value School
Kobe University Value School (V.School) is an interdisciplinary school which acts as a bridge among various graduate schools and Kobe University and society for co-creating new value. V.School develops new education for creating value under the concept that value has two aspects: value emergence and value design. The school imparts knowledge about value to students and gives opportunities for thinking about value with professors from various research fields including philosophy, engineering, system informatics, agriculture, literature, business, economics and medicine. V.School gives a certificate at the end of a one- or two-year programme.
Professor Katsuhiko Kokubu (Vice-President of Kobe University) is the director of V.School supported by the associate directors Professor Hisashi Tamaki and Professor Kenji Kutsuna. Professors Takayuki Sakai, Hiroki Tsuruta and Keiko Gion manage the V.School. And professors from various departments join the School: Professor Alexander Ronni (International Corporation), Professor Atsushi Iizuka (Engineering), Professor Hiroshi Uchida (Business Administration), Professor Shuichi Okada (Human Development and Environment), Professor Makoto Kikuchi (System Informatics), Professor Takashi Kita (Engineering), Professor Atsushi Koike (Engineering), Professor Ichiro Nagasaka (Literature), Professor Masaya Nakatsuka (Agriculture), Professor Takashi Nishida (Intercultural Studies), Professor Kimitaka Nishitani (Economics and Business Administration), Professor Takumi Fukumoto (Medicine), Professor Nobutada Fujii (System Informatics), Professor Fuikazu Morimura (Business Administration), Professor Kazuhiko Yamamoto (Science & Tech Innovation), Professor Kazuhiro Harada (Human Development and Environment) and Professor Masaki Kumano (Innovation Commercialization Division). Hirofumi Ueda (LeaGLO), Masakazu Sato (Japan & India Project Design) and Yukio Yasukawa (Ikinasekai) are the guest professors. The School was started in April 2020. As of October 2020, about 70 students registered as the members of the V.School.
For joining our V.School, you can contact us by referring to the URL
The Center for Social Value Creation at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, USA
The Center for Social Value Creation embodies a passionate mission: educate, engage and empower Smith students to create a better world through business. We strive to create a world where businesses operate for the long-term value of both people and planet. Internally, we are the hub of learning for how business is good for society. We represent the Smith School in collaboration with other departments to instil social impact in every sector related to business. Externally, we create future business leaders who will be able to tackle our world’s greatest challenges. These business leaders will shape their organizations to understand the values of both mission and profit.
Accomplishments at CSVC annually include engaging over 5000 Smith students, alumni, faculty, staff and industry professionals through our speaker events, newsletters, case competitions and other experiential learning opportunities. This past year we founded our Impact Consulting Fellowship (ICF). Over the course of 8 weeks, ICF offered a summer learning experience for 145 students, supporting 23 different impact-driven organizations, impacting all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and totalled over 12,000 hours of pro bono consulting service.
Creating Value School at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology 1 (JAIST) was founded in October 1990 as the first independent national graduate school in Japan. A total of about 1200 master’s and doctoral students are engaged in research activities in the disciplines of Knowledge Science, Information Science, and Material Science. JAIST’s main campus is in Nomi, Ishikawa Prefecture, where more than 50 per cent of the students are international students. JAIST has also a Tokyo Satellite in Minato-ku, Tokyo. The Tokyo Satellite is aimed at working professionals (students who have completed their undergraduate or graduate studies and are now in the workforce). At the satellite, there are approximately 250 master’s and doctoral students. As they are working professionals, the students have an extreme interest in creating value.
JAIST currently confers two degrees at the Tokyo Satellite: Knowledge Science and Information Science. Apart from the degrees, JAIST issues certificates for programme completion. The current programmes are the Management of Technology (MOT) Program, the Management of Services (MOS) Program and the Internet of Things Innovation Program. We have a plan to add a new programme that focuses on creating value. The new programme development requires careful preparation and takes time. Although it has not been determined yet, we assume that the programme will begin in April 2022. As part of the preparatory work, we are considering starting a trial version of a new lecture on creating value from April 2021. In addition, we envision a one-day, ‘round-the-world’ presentation workshop (Kohda, 2020) in collaboration with the other Creating Value Schools.
Customer Value and Sales Research Center at Aalborg University Business School, Denmark
This Center is affiliated with the Marketing and Sales Management Program, focusing on value creation at the University of Aalborg, Denmark.
The purpose of the Customer Value and Sales Research Center is to create a forum for dialogue, knowledge exchange and innovation related to value co-creation in sales. We organize a global organization of world leading researchers in marketing and sales, and our administrative hub is at Aalborg Business School.
As societal challenges develop and change, there is a growing need to reconceptualize and broaden the notion of value and better understand how sales processes can contribute to value co-creation as perceived by buyers, sellers and society at large. By emphasizing the role of co-creation in sales, we challenge the prevailing paradigm of viewing consumers as passive recipients and producers as creators of value. Co-involving customers, business and society as co-creators of value opens for different idea of sales, which potentially have consequences for the way market exchange, production, consumption and retail are organized and managed. A forum for dialogue and collaboration between leading sales research and practice can lead the way into the next generation of sales management.
The Center is backed by an advisory board consisting of business leaders and researchers for Denmark, Finland, India and France to ensure an international outlook. Currently the Center is planning first activities for early 2021 in the form of webinars, seminars and collaborative research projects. Please contact Karina Burgdorff Jensen at burgdorff@business.aau.dk for more information about the Center and future activities.