How do we define value? It is not money or price; it is not just benefits, but the combination of what you give and what you get. Creating Value is executing normal, conscious, inspired mindset and actions that increase the overall good and well-being, and the worth of and for ideas, goods, services, people or institutions including society, and all stakeholders (like employees, customers, partners, shareholders, environment and society), and value waiting to happen.

The value of the value concept is that the value concept applies to you and to institutions, to companies and to countries. They have to create value for their stakeholders and avoid destroying value for them. Often one has to balance value destruction and value creation. Value Creation starts with giving. We find that you can create limited value for yourself. You create more value for yourself when you create value for others and others come back and create greater value for you in return. When you want to sell a concept, you start by giving what you think is of value to the receiver. The receiver receives it and sees a different amount of value that he receives. The receiver then creates value for you by buying from you or publicising you or by talking about you or believing in you. Generally, the receiver creates much more value than what you create for the receiver.

Value Alliance

Like-minded people have started the Creating Value Alliance. The purpose of the Creating Value Alliance is to increase awareness of Value Creation and help you become value creators by sharing knowledge, ideas and networking with great value creators. Gautam Mahajan is the mentor.

The Creating Value Alliance (CreatingValue.co) consists of:

·A knowledge sharing, mentoring and networking platform

·The Journal of Creating Value jcv.sagepub.com. Gautam Mahajan is the Founder editor.

·The global conferences on creating value

·Value Schools and Centres around the world

The Journal of Creating Value has Phil Kotler, Jag Sheth, Steve Vargo, Youji Kohda, Christian Gronroos, Hermann Simon, Jim Spohrer, V. Kumar and others on the Board. I am the Founder editor.

The 8th Global Conference on Creating Value will be held in London, UK at the Imperial College in October 2025. The 7th was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil on October 2-4, 2024 https://landingpage.ccbrasil.cc/creating-value. The first was in the UK, the second in New York, the third in Paris and the fourth (virtual) from Florida, the fifth in Japan, the sixth in Washington DC.

Value Research

 Gautam Mahajan is  the co-chair of these conferences. We are associated with the Value Research Centre at Doshisha University in Japan https://www.valueresearchcenter.com/ ; We helped start the Value School at Kobe University, Japan https://www.value.kobe-u.ac.jp/ ; and the Creating Value School at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Japan.

The Kobe University Value School has 170 students, and they get a certificate in value creation. All doctoral students at JAIST have to go through Creating Value courses.

In addition, around the world, the Canter for Social Value Creation at the University of Maryland https://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/centers-initiatives/social-value-creation; the Creating Value Centre for Sales and Marketing in Denmark; the Value Creation Wheel Lab at Nova School of Business and Economics in Portugal, https://www.valuecreationwheel.com/. the Madden centre for Creating Value at the Florida Atlantic University, https://business.fau.edu/centers/madden-center-for-value-creation/

With the Madden Centre we are working on a Creating Value Education Platform portal to disseminate information. We wish to do more globally and in India and institutionalize the value creation movement.

Zero Complaints world

More is written in Zero Complaints: The Path to Continuous Value Creation. Published by Taylor and Francis, UK in 2025, it is the only book that lays out the importance for organizations to ensure their customers do not have a need to complain and share their frustrations with other customers.

The book shows why customers complain and how these complaints create huge problems for organizations, including limiting their growth, increasing unnecessary costs, contributing to customer churn, and upsetting employees. The book also calculates the enormous costs of complaints that can be saved in a Zero Complaints world. The book then goes on to describe processes and technologies that can identify and address the underlying reasons for those complaints, as well as the organizational changes required and mandated to provide continuous improvements.

In addition to providing a series of how-to recommendations, the book also includes a wide range of examples from many companies and organizations around the world that have successfully embarked on the path to achieving Zero Complaints, using the Zero Defects learnings and going towards Zero Problems. This book is designed to change management thinking.

(The author is an inventor and a global thought leader in value creation and the editor of the Journal of Creating Value. HIs co-authored book Zero Complaints: The Path to Continuous Value Creation will be released in New Delhi on April 23 at India Habitat Centre. He can be reached at Gautam.Mahajan@gmail.com )