Last week I called a friend and inspiration, Verna Allee, the founder of ValueNetworks.com and the driving force behind many successful applications of Value Network Analysis. I was pleased to learn that ValueNetworks.com was receiving a significant honor from the IT analyst firm Gartner. The award names Verna’s organization as a “Cool Vendor” in the Collaboration category as a result of their innovation and business impact. This is very exciting news. An increasing body of companies are recognizing the need to think beyond value chains and tangible items alone, and to explore the vital world of intangible transactions that, combined with transactions of tangible elements, govern both internal and external ecosystems. The language and paradigms of the Value Network approach are all about understanding how things really work. How does information flow? How do relationships affect business? What are the barriers and incentives to cooperation? How does one build and nurture a healthy ecosystem with business partners and employees? How does one troubleshoot a dysfunctional ecosystem?
Verna has been a thought leader in advancing awareness for these issues, along with practical and sophisticated tools. The three-day training I had with her and her colleague, Oliver Schwabe, a couple years ago transformed many things for me. Now when I work with a company on their innovation systems, a lot of bizarre behaviors and puzzling roadblocks suddenly make sense when Value Network considerations are applied.
Verna was one of several inspirations for me in exploring the personal aspects of innovation and the sometimes hidden barriers that we call innovation fatigue factors. I cite her important work, The Future of Knowledge, in our forthcoming book, though we do not delve into holomaps and other Value Network concepts (mostly due to space limitations). But the perspective of understanding intangibles and the behaviors they influence pervade much of our work. I’m happy to again acknowledge Verna Allee for her groundbreaking work and congratulate her and her impressive team of Value Network champions for this fine award.
When it comes to innovation in the business is done, Value Network Analysis is a great example of an innovative tool that is helping leaders to see and even measure things that were invisible before. Just as dark energy and dark matter are now being said by physicists to dominate the way the universe behaves, the invisible intangibles in your own ecosystem can dominate what happens, but you’ll never know about it if you rely on old tools that focus on formal roles, value chains, and transactions of tangibles alone.