“Digital value creation” is any generation of value based on the use of digital technologies.
“Digital value creation” can be defined as any generation of products and services based on the use of digital information and communication technology resulting in goods and services that possess some inherent quality which constitutes a worthiness to be desired. “Digital value creation” in the broadest sense is any production based on the use of digital information and communication technology that is capable of contributing to satisfying human needs under the conditions of scarcity.
The use of digital technologies for the purpose of “value creation” is a direct consequence of digitalization and a central phenomenon of digital change. In many areas, this leads to a fundamental change in the “value creation logic”. In this change the disruptive potential of digitization manifests itself. The consequence of “Digital Disruption” is a fundamental change in the “value creation architecture”.
Increasing interconnectedness, flexibility and dynamics are characteristic for the change in the structures within which “value creation” takes place. The newly emerging forms of the “value creation structure” are referred to as the “value network” or “value grid”. They replace the “value chain” as the previously dominant form of cooperative “value creation”. In the “value chain”, the emergence of value was seen as the result of the interaction of several actors cooperating along a linear sequence of individual actions. In contrast, “digital value creation” is taking place within much more flexible structures. Digital transformation is thus fundamentally changing the established “value creation logic”. The reconfiguration of the “value chain” offers immense “digital opportunities” for innovations from which new products and services can emerge.
From a strategic perspective, one of the central challenges for management is to design a business model that enables a company to integrate itself into the value creation structure of a market in such a way that the company is able to make a unique and indispensable contribution to the cooperative process of value creation on the basis of its specific core competencies.
