Long-read • Estimated reading time: 14 minutes
On a cool, grey, November morning in London, the Royal Geographical Society felt like a fitting place to examine how organizations create value.
The building has hosted explorers, scientists, and mapmakers for more than a century, and for two days it became the meeting point for a different kind of exploration focused on how industries decide what matters in innovation, and why those decisions vary so widely.
I was at the Eighth Global Conference on Creating Value at Imperial College London, hosted by the Creating Value Alliance and the Customer Value Foundation.
The turnout was modest, but those who attended were all experts in their fields; senior researchers, industry leaders, and strategists who study the evidence, incentives, and structures shaping value creation in their sectors.
I went because of the content focus, but also because it’s rare to see so many distinguished academics, industry leaders, and practitioners examining the same question in the same place, at the same time. I also wanted to understand perspectives around creating shared value (more on that later).
They were there to ask why some innovations create value while others stall.
Where most conversations about innovation focus on the idea itself, this conference examined what happens after an idea exists, when systems, people, and decision structures determine whether value is realized or lost, and how businesses can create value.
That is the gap I wanted to understand, and it’s the focus of this recap — what the people who study value creation can teach us about why good ideas struggle to take hold in the real world, and how to lead through those challenges.
And today these questions feel more urgent for leaders.
The 2025 Global CEO Survey from PwC shows that leaders are increasing their investment in artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and operational reinvention, yet many remain uncertain about whether those investments will translate into lasting performance gains.
At the same time, the OECD’s 2025 Compendium of Productivity Indicators highlights that productivity growth across advanced economies remains weak, even as innovation spending continues to rise.
Together these findings point to a growing tension: Organizations are innovating faster than the systems around them can take on, and leaders are being pressed to show not only what they build, but the value it actually delivers.
The Global Conference on Creating Value examined how different systems define, measure, and recognize value and at its core, ran on a very straightforward idea: Value is not fixed or universal. It shifts with perception, evidence, incentives, and whether a system is prepared to support adoption.
Over two days, sessions moved through healthcare, aerospace, automotive, education, technology, branding, and public services, and similar themes surfaced in all of them.
James Barlow, the chair in technology and innovation management (healthcare) at Imperial College Business School, co-chaired the conference. His work focuses on innovation adoption in complex environments, and the program reflected that through sessions centred on system design and evidence.
One of the first things about the conference that caught my attention was how many different places attendees came from.
As speakers made their way to the podium, I began writing down where they lived and worked. Peru, Canada, the United States, Finland, Germany, Tunisia, Japan, Cyprus, India — I stopped once it became clear the list would keep growing.
Gautam Mahajan, co-chair of the conference, and president of the Customer Value Foundation argued that companies often confuse value creation with value addition.
“Value addition is not value creation,” he said. “Value creation is creating something meaningful that improves lives or systems.”
Mahajan, who is also the founding editor of the Journal of Creating Value, stressed that value is always determined by the receiver rather than the organization producing the offering. Companies fail, he argued, when they judge value from their own perspective rather than from the world of the people they are trying to serve.
In his view, customer value is only one part of a broader value equation that includes employees, society, and the systems that surround the business.
“We started the value creation movement in 2013 although many of us were working in customer value management,” he said. “We realized that creating value went beyond customer value.”
Across conversations and panels, many of the same questions kept resurfacing.
What determines whether an idea can work inside an ecosystem or environment? What shapes people’s willingness to adopt something new? And what slows teams down when the work around them is changing faster than their organizations can keep up?
Three themes surfaced consistently:
- Systems determine whether innovation can be absorbed.
- People decide whether it makes sense.
- Leadership structures influence whether teams can act with the speed and accuracy their environment demands.
Here is a closer look at those themes:
How systems turn innovation into outcomes
Healthcare offered the clearest illustration of how system structure affects adoption.
Arianna Gentilini, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College Business School, explained how national health technology assessment bodies in the UK and France can review the same clinical evidence, yet reach different decisions. Each country applies its own criteria, including budget impact, population needs, and policy priorities.
“There have been instances where the same drug that is assessed in the UK has a relatively different conclusion in terms of the value of the drug,” Gentilini said. “National priorities are not always the same.”
Her example showed how clinical evidence and real-world value differ.
Clinical trials may demonstrate that a therapy works. However, patients see benefit only if reimbursement processes, staffing, and operational workflows support its use. A treatment can perform well in trials and still experience slow uptake if the surrounding system is not prepared to carry it into everyday practice.
Takeaway: A therapy can demonstrate strong clinical benefit yet still stall if reimbursement pathways, staffing levels, or operational workflows are not prepared for it.
Diagnostics showed a similar set of findings.
Many diagnostic tools help clinicians make faster decisions and improve system efficiency. These contributions depend on workflow and adoption.
Evaluation frameworks often focus on direct clinical outcomes and overlook improvements to decision-making or efficiency. When those benefits go unmeasured, they fail to influence policy or funding decisions.
Takeaway: A diagnostic tool can work exactly as intended, but its value disappears if the system does not capture improvements to decision-making or efficiency.
Aerospace discussions pointed to similar dynamics.
Sergey Kravchenko, a former Boeing executive and a leading expert in civil aviation and engineering, described how AI-assisted modelling allows engineers to test thousands of design variations without physical prototypes.
While the tools increase speed and precision, adoption depends on clear accountability and public confidence.
Kravchenko noted that autonomous systems involve many different actors. Engineers design the systems, regulators approve them, software teams update them, and operators run them day to day. When something goes wrong, responsibility is not obvious.
“If these autonomous cars kill a child on the road in California, who will be accountable?” he asked. “That is a really big challenge.”
His point was that accountability determines whether advanced systems ever make it into real-world use. Until roles are defined and until the public trusts that someone is answerable for the consequences, the technology remains limited in where it can be deployed. The capability may be there, but the system has to be ready to carry the risk.
Takeaway: AI-driven modelling could shorten design cycles, but adoption depends on regulatory clarity and societal comfort with new levels of autonomy.
An automotive perspective came from Joachim Taiber, a former BMW executive and now managing director of a leading international mobility-testing consortium.
Taiber outlined how electrification and software-defined vehicles expand what manufacturers can build, but success depends on factors far beyond the vehicle itself.
Charging infrastructure, battery supply chains, grid capacity, servicing capability, and workforce training all influence whether customers experience the benefits these vehicles promise. A technically advanced vehicle still relies on the readiness of the surrounding system.
Takeaway: System readiness is one of the main drivers of whether innovation becomes real, adopted, and trusted.
Why people decide whether value is real
When we look at how people interact with products, services, and institutions, value is shaped less by technical design and more by how people interpret and experience what is offered. Trust, understanding, and relevance often matter as much as functionality.
Xueying Zhang from Hokuriku University underscored this point when presenting her research focused on how students judge whether an educational environment feels credible or meaningful. She emphasized that institutions cannot define “authenticity” through curriculum alone.
“Authenticity is not given by the institution,” she said. “It is co-created through the relationships, prospects, and the interactions.”
Her point was that the quality of a learning experience depends on how students see themselves in it and whether the environment supports their development. A program that appears strong in structure can still fall short if the surrounding relationships and context do not create confidence, belonging, or purpose.
Takeaway: People judge value by how an experience fits their identity, expectations, and sense of belonging, not only by its technical design.
The same idea surfaced in the STEM and entrepreneurial-mindset discussions. Instructors described how students learned more effectively when working on community-defined problems that carried real stakes. Progress came from collaboration, feedback, and practical constraints, not from the mechanics of the assignment itself.
Brand meaning and activism reflected a similar pattern.
Researchers noted that people judge brands by what they do, not what they say. A message that feels credible in one context may be dismissed in another, depending on culture, lived experience, and expectations. Value emerges from how actions are interpreted, not from intention alone.
Takeaway: Credibility grows from consistent action. People decide value by what organizations do, not what they promise.
Customer-value discussions reinforced this further.
Several presenters stressed that organizations often focus on features and functionality while overlooking the surrounding experience. Customers remember whether they felt supported, whether a solution fit into their workflow, and whether it addressed a real need. A technically sound product can still be experienced as low value if it does not align with how people understand or use it.
In short — people don’t respond to offerings in isolation. They respond to how something fits their expectations, needs, and context. Human interpretation determines whether a system earns trust, whether a service feels reliable, or whether a product is adopted.
For leaders, this has direct implications.
Creating value requires understanding how people make sense of experiences and what shapes their confidence in new ideas. Organizations that invest in relationships, communication, clarity, and credibility are better positioned to see their work recognized and used.
Takeaway: People define value through context, identity, and lived experience, and organizations often underestimate how much these factors determine real-world adoption.
How leadership speeds up or slows value creation
A recurring theme across the discussions was the strain on leadership systems. The way many organizations make decisions and structure work no longer matches the pace or complexity of their environment.
Janka Krings-Klebe, an author and managing partner of co-shift, focused on how these structural mismatches slow organizations that are trying to innovate. She said many companies still make decisions based on how things worked when change was slower and plans lasted longer.
“The management operating system that we are running in our organizations was designed for a slow and stable world,” she said.
Krings-Klebe explained that expertise now sits closer to the work, while decision authority often remains several layers away. This distance creates delays at the moment teams need to move quickly.
“There is a gap between where decisions are made and where knowledge sits,” she said.
She argued that this gap requires redesigning how organizations function.
One of her key recommendations was shifting from traditional hierarchies to what she called networks of competence groups that form around expertise rather than reporting lines. These networks allow decisions to form where real understanding exists, not where charts place authority.
Takeaway: Organizations adapt sooner and with fewer mistakes when decisions are made by the people who understand the work, not the people highest in the hierarchy.
Krings-Klebe also emphasized the need for continuous learning.
Many organizations still treat adaptation as a periodic event. She said this no longer fits the reality of the work, as teams need ways to learn in shorter cycles and adjust as new information appears, without waiting for annual planning rounds or formal resets.
She connected this to a broader need to update the management logic that guides leaders. She described legacy structures as an outdated operating code that no longer matches the environment it runs in.
“We are running yesterday’s code on today’s hardware,” she said.
In her view, decisions should follow the people who understand the problem rather than the people with the most senior titles. This requires clarity about where knowledge resides and decision paths that reflect that reality.
Shortening the distance between insight and action means reducing layers, removing bottlenecks, and giving teams the ability to act when the information is fresh. The goal is accuracy because delays often distort the context leaders rely on.
The customer-value discussions at the conference also showed how this can break down.
Donna Weber, an author and expert in onboarding and customer adoption, described how internal systems can pull teams away from what customers actually need. She spoke about organizations where teams were being measured on things that have nothing to do with a customer. The result, she said, is that companies focus on internal outputs while customers wait to see any benefit.
Weber explained that long, monolithic deployments often overwhelm users and lead to disengagement. This happens especially when teams “dump everything about the product” at once or delay engagement until the system is fully live. Her examples showed how early value gets lost when internal priorities overshadow what customers need in the first weeks of adoption.
Takeaway: Value collapses early when onboarding is built around internal priorities instead of the way customers actually learn and work.
Alan Williams, Director of Servicebrand Global, added another angle in a session on kindness. His focus was on the behaviours that influence whether information moves honestly inside an organization.
Williams said psychological safety shapes performance because people share more accurate insight when they feel safe raising concerns or uncertainty.
“Kindness is not soft,” he said. “It strengthens performance.”
He argued that when people hesitate to speak up, leaders make decisions with partial information and problems surface only once they are harder and more costly to fix.
He said honesty depends on whether people feel safe expressing uncertainty or concern, and that small acts of kindness create a ripple effect in how openly teams communicate.
When self-interest enters the interaction, that trust narrows.
His point was that communication quality is a performance issue because leaders cannot act on insight they never hear.
Takeaway: Leadership depends on systems that let people work with speed, trust, and accurate information. Organizations that rely on structures built for stability risk slowing the people they depend on to create value.
How shared value strengthens long-term performance
While not named explicitly, several sessions turned to Michael Porter’s concept of shared value which I take particular interest in.
Porter is a Harvard strategist who argues that companies perform better when business and societal outcomes strengthen each other. I first saw that idea applied in a practical way through CSV Midstream Solutions in northern Alberta. Their approach treats business performance and community wellbeing as connected, with decisions shaped by what strengthens both over the long term.
Seeing that up close gave me a clearer sense of how shared value works in practice, and it has influenced how I think about value creation in my own work at Digital Journal. It gave me something concrete to compare against when the discussion moved toward measurement standards and performance.
Adrian Dore, a Senior Consultant at Growing Value, argued that the current system still rewards value extraction more than value creation.
He said this happens because companies are measured almost entirely on financial results, while the effects of their decisions on people and communities sit outside core management systems.
Dore added that frameworks like ESG, CSR, and integrated reporting have not fixed this because they sit on the margins and cannot be compared across organizations. He called for a “universally comparable measurement standard” that puts business results and social outcomes on the same level so creating value for people is treated as part of performance rather than a separate conversation.
Without it, value creation remains an intention rather than something that shapes incentives or accountability.
Maurizio Zollo’s work at the Leonardo Centre on Business for Society picked up that thread at the systems level. He said their research aims to understand how companies can shift from minimizing harm to creating net positive outcomes for society.
The Leonardo Centre studies decades of corporate behaviour to identify which business practices actually improve social and environmental systems, and how those practices can be built into the way firms operate.
Zollo described this as redesigning business around a more “regenerative” logic, where value creation strengthens the systems companies rely on rather than depleting them.
Companies that invested in deeper transformational sustainability initiatives delivered higher risk-adjusted returns over a 13-year period than the market benchmarks they were measured against.
Zollo said these initiatives included shifts in product design, supply chains, organizational capabilities, and business models.
He emphasised that the findings came from tracking real behaviour at scale.
The Leonardo Centre analyzed more than 1.5 million corporate actions across 18,000 firms in 70 sectors and compared the long-term performance of companies that made deeper operational changes with those that focused on signalling or disclosure.
These were firms that redesigned products, processes, and supply chains in ways that improved both business performance and societal outcomes.
In other words, the same actions that, in shared-value terms, strengthen both business performance and societal outcomes also delivered higher long-term financial returns.
Takeaway: Companies create more value when they solve real problems for the people and systems they rely on, not when they treat impact as a separate track.
Jaideep Prabhu, a professor of marketing at the University of Cambridge in England, argued that frugal innovation shows how business value and societal value can reinforce each other.
He highlighted products designed for people who can’t afford or access mainstream solutions, such as a $13 clay fridge that uses evaporative cooling in rural India.
“The idea is to serve people who live in rural areas, who might not have access to the other ones,” he said.
He added examples from low-cost medical devices and mobile payments that are far more financially accessible but also valuable for those who use them.
His point was that designing for extreme affordability can open entirely new markets while solving real problems, which makes frugal innovation a practical expression of shared value rather than a niche or charitable exercise.
Across sectors, the same core dynamic kept surfacing.
Innovation succeeds when systems are ready for it, when people understand how it fits into their world, and when leadership structures move information to where decisions need to be made. None of these conditions appear by accident. They are choices that shape whether value is created, recognized, or lost.
Innovation alone does not explain competitive advantage. The conditions that turn ideas into outcomes do.
Final shots
- Systems determine whether ideas succeed because organizations create value only when the structures around the work can support adoption, scale, and real-world results. Even strong ideas stall when the conditions that surround them are misaligned, unclear, or built for a world that no longer exists.
- People decide whether value is real, and their judgments are shaped by trust, relevance, and lived experience. Value emerges from how an offering fits into someone’s world, not from how well it is designed or described, and organizations often underestimate how much interpretation shapes outcomes.
- Leadership sets the pace of value creation because decisions depend on how close authority sits to knowledge. Organizations move faster when people who understand the work can influence the choices being made, and when communication flows honestly through psychological safety rather than hierarchy.
- Creating shared value is a practical lens, not a side narrative. The actions that create benefit for society and strengthen the systems organizations rely on are often the same actions that drive long-term performance. Value grows when companies solve real problems in ways that align business outcomes with broader impact.
