Abstract
The 6th Global Conference for Creating Value will be held in Lisbon May 24-26, 2023 at the Nova School of Business and Economics. Gautam Mahajan and Luis Filipe Lages are the co-chairs.
Value Creation Wheel, Nova School of Business and Economics, Lisbon, Portugal has joined our consortium of value schools and value centres.
Value Research Center, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
The Value Research Center was officially established at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan in November 2021. The purpose of this research centre is to research and develop a system for measuring, monitoring, assessing and reporting on value creation and destruction impacts that organizations make on various stakeholder groups including (a) the organization itself, as well as its (b) shareholders or owners, (c) customers, (d) employees, (e) partners, the (f) society within which it operates and (g) the planet (submitted by Prof Philip Sugai).
The Value Creation Wheel (VCW) Lab at Nova SBE, Portugal
The Mission of the Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE) in Portugal is to be a community dedicated to the development of talent and knowledge that impacts the world. According to the Financial Times, it is currently one of the leading business schools in Europe, being one of the TOP 20 in the World for different master’s degrees in management. Within this context, the vision of Value Creation Wheel (VCW) Lab at Nova SBE is to have a positive impact on the world. This is done by supporting individuals, leaders and their teams, who believe in the power of innovation and collective decision-making (e.g., collective intelligence within their teams and stakeholders) to take optimal decisions and find sustainable solutions for their challenges. The mission of the VCW Lab is to help others to take better decisions and make the right decisions in the right manner. During the last two decades, the VCW Lab has developed and tested a wide range of VCW’s products/services, always supported by Research & Development (R&D), testing, go-to-market, commercialization and sustainable sales. The VCW method (Lages, 2016, Lages et al., 2020) has been used by individuals and organizations which desire to make decisions to solve challenges supported by the following five pillars: (a) a sustainable approach, (b) common good, (c) collaboration, (d) wisdom and (e) transparency. The final goal is to contribute to better innovation, decision-making and sustainability, while constantly improving the VCW method.
The VCW Lab at Nova SBE was a recipient of over 1 Million€ in EU funds over the years. It has been working with all types of organizations, ranging from start-ups and NGOs to large organizations and Fortune 500 (e.g., Airbus, Credit Suisse, Mastercard, McDonalds, Thomson Reuters). It is currently involved in major H2020 projects (e.g., NextLand and NextOcean), which will help to address innovation, commercialization and tech-transfer challenges in Agriculture/Forestry as well as Fishing/Aquaculture in the context of Space and Earth Observation. It has been applied in student projects by over 20 leading universities across the world (e.g., City University of Hong Kong, Marseille University, MIT, Korea University, Vienna University and Warwick University).
For a proper understanding of the VCW Lab at Nova SBE and the VCW method, we recommend an in-depth examination of the VCW method’s refereed publications (Lages, 2016, Lages et al. 2020), case studies (e.g., Fonseca et al. 2018; Lages et al. 2018; Reis-Marques et al., 2019), the videos available at
Value School at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
JAIST (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) is the first higher education institution in Japan that offers only graduate programs; it does not have any undergraduate program (
JAIST has launched a Creating Value Program for doctoral students studying at Tokyo Satellite since April 2022. This is a diploma of creating value program that can be attained after the completion of the required credits. This diploma aims to let the students procure the determination and skills of creating value thinking.
JAIST has adopted a unique approach to implement Creating Value education. Many educational institutions have adopted PBL (Project-based learning or Problem-based learning), which can give a realistic value-creating experience to students who have no work experience. However, the Creating Value education for working professionals could be different from the one for young students with no work experience.
In recurrent education, students enrol, when they feel it is needed, for example, the assignment of new tasks to them from their organization, or they get promoted and start having subordinates. In other words, they come to JAIST with their real problems to be solved with sufficient motivation. Doctoral dissertation and master’s thesis research are exactly what they need. The skill of setting research questions, doing a literature review and writing a thesis are exactly what recurrent education can provide to working professionals to solve their problems systematically. Importantly, once they experience such a systematic method, they will be able to solve the next subsequent problem in the workplace without any guidance.
The experience of collaborative team-based problem-solving is the only thing that differentiates PBL from traditional thesis research. The mentioned Creating Value Program was introduced to supplement the experience of team-based problem-solving. Initially, the participants of the program learn a group active learning method called Learning through Discussion (Rabow et al., 2000). This method allows them to improve their skill for intense reading of the literature through the power of collaboration, that is, critically reading the literature. We expect that this method will give students the basic skills for creating value and will improve their power of thinking out of the box.
The Center for Social Value Creation, University of Maryland
The Center for Social Value Creation (CSVC) housed within the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business serves to educate, engage and empower the Smith community and the world to create a better world through business. We do this through thought-provoking dialogue, hands-on experiences and thought leadership. Each year we fulfil all three of these pillars through our programmatic and research efforts. In May, the Centre hosted its inaugural Environmental, Social, Governance Conference: Reimagine Your Impact in which industry experts and thought-leaders gathered to engage in meaningful discussions surrounding ESG topics and implications for the business world. The Centre will be hosting our second iteration of the conference this upcoming December and we look forward to bringing together faculty, researchers and industry leaders in ESG and sustainable business to continue the discussion. Our Impact Consulting Fellowship (ICF), piloted in the summer of 2020, has been running for seven iterations now. With over 500 students and 12 colleges, this unique program provides students of all levels at the university an opportunity to engage in hands-on, pro-bono consulting work within a team for B-Corporations, non-profit organizations and for-profit impact-driven organizations in various industries. Our students have helped over 60 organizations with over 80 alumni achieve over 350,000 pro-bono consulting hours. This has in turn aided their learning outcomes, creating internship opportunities and our next generation of impactful leaders, while we partner to advance the public good. This Fall, CSVC is also creating a State of Social Value Creation report, State of Impact: Maximizing Value for People, Plant and Shareholders, where we are exploring how 120 corporations across 10 industries incorporate Social Value Creation into their business model. This study will introduce new perspectives on how Social Value Creation is being implemented in practice, and offer insights that are at the forefront of social impact as we know it. To stay updated on the latest Center for Social Value Creation news and learn more, visit our website here.
The Creating Value Centre for Sales and Business at Aalborg University Business School
The creating value centre for sales and business at Aalborg University Business school is currently working on seminars to be conducted online and hybrid in the spring of 2023. The centre is also involved in a knowledge-festival to be held live in Aalborg with keynotes, discussions and more in February 2023. The centre is led by Karina Burgdorff and three student assistants are volunteering.
The 5th Global Conference on Creating Value was held from 2nd September until the 4th, 2022. The event was sponsored by the Creating Value Alliance, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Kobe University. Before the conference, I was drawn to Philip Kotler’s (Kellogg School of Management) presentation on ‘Sustainable Marketing: Creating and Delivering Value’ as well as Steve Vargo’s (University of Hawaii) presentation entitled, ‘(Re)evaluation Value’. As expected, both presentations were phenomenal, but I also found a few other gems at the conference.
The areas covered by each presenter were really diverse; some presenters were focusing on creating value in local communities, while others were focusing on creating value globally. Each presenter talked about how to define value, how to deliver value to stakeholders and how to measure said value. As many of the presenters pointed out, digitalization, interaction and design have become commonplace essentials in creating value.
I was especially impressed by Lisa Bonsdorff Dalsgaard’s touching presentation on discovering and creating value even throughout her gruelling battle with cancer. Listening to her story, I realized creating value closely relates to our perception of happiness because it is, after all, what we are ultimately in pursuit of. I was also surprised to see a visual graph representing her levels of happiness throughout her life which shared very similar correlations to a graph I saw before presented by a pupil of Professor Takashi Maeno (Keio University) who is renowned for his studies on happiness. Finding what intrigues and enraptures potential customers is the principal challenge of all companies. Seeing such striking similarities between the two charts had me thinking, perhaps the recipe for happiness is consistent throughout the world.
I have been dealing with direct and interactive marketing for decades. Creating Value, from my experience, relies heavily upon ascertaining the everchanging ideal metrics of marketing accountability, the core essence of direct and interactive marketing. Companies have been forced to step away from focusing merely on short-term returns and are being made to change their values and the way they interact with customers, igniting discussions on creating value throughout the world. What customers view as valuable has been rapidly changing alongside society’s fast-paced transition. Changes in regulations and public view in regards to issues such as global warming and digitalization (which tend to involve leads to privacy issues) have been transforming the mindsets and goals of stakeholders, including employees and customers. Now, companies have to put more focus on finding ways for their products to aid in solving social issues that fall in line with the company’s purpose. Thinking of how to define, deliver and measure our own value is imperative to ‘Creating Value’ of any sort.
At the conference, several familiar brand names were mentioned throughout some of the presentations such as Zappos, a prominent e-commerce company that I have covered quite a few times in my monthly magazine, I.M. Press. I was also delighted to hear the mention of the Rage Study that I provided localization services for as an advisor. I.M. Press has had a strong focus on not only direct and interactive marketing but also customer relationship management, customer experience, voice of the customer, crowdsourcing, etc. Looking back, in a way, the essential aspects of ‘Creating Value’ were embedded in I.M. Press. In a sense, I.M. Press may have been an embodiment of ‘Creating Value’.
I.M. Press was a Japanese monthly magazine issued between 1995 and 2014. Now, thousands of case studies featured in the magazine are shared free of charge via my website, * Interactive Marketing Matome Site (
Michiko Nishimura
Editor in Chief & Owner of I.M. Press/Freelance Columnist
Interactive Marketing Matome Site
* Interactive Marketing Matome Site is an online curation platform in Japan.
Prof Ashok Ashta adds:
One of the highlights for me was a question that I was asked, ‘what brings you, by’. My prompt answer was ‘creating value is the start point of all business’. Reflecting on this very simple exchange I could understand that value creation is not as obvious as I thought. I could learn that there is a need to instil a spirit of creating value. This question still needs to be asked??? Hmmm…
A second highlight for me was the opportunity to talk directly to prominent thought leaders on the topic, presenters such as Ken Suzuki, Steve Vargo and Ambassador Sanjay Verma to mention just a few. Speaking with them inspired me to develop my own research to be relevant to broader audiences. I could understand from their activity the hard work ahead for me. The conference has been truly motivating.
The most important highlight for me was the casual lunch and two dinners. These were wonderful occasions to break the ice with fellow participants and understand the hidden giant personalities, that is to say those that are not yet in the limelight. Their personal stories and growth paths cannot be shared here but put simply I would attend the Kanazawa conference again if I know that they too will attend. That human relationship germination is perhaps one of the biggest values created for me. Many thanks to Prof Kohda and his organizing team. Many, many thanks.
Prof Ashok Ashta, The University of Kitakyushu, Japan