Differences in value creating logics and their managerial consequences: the case of authors, publishers and printers
Lisa Fernström, Göran Roos · Swinburne figshare (Swinburne University of Technology) · 2003
The book publishing industry connects parties that differ significantly in their nature. Looking at the business that surrounds and supports the making and production of a book, a handful of very different players are involved. In this article, we have chosen to focus on the three main conventional players: authors, publishers and printers. These three all play essential roles in producing a book and getting it to the hands of the reader. Put another way, they all create value in the process of making a book. However, the way they create value is very different one from the other and this has consequences for the dynamics in the industry and especially for the manner in which companies are managed. This is the issue that we intend to discuss in this paper. Our approach to the problem of value creation is that of intellectual capital, defined as 'any intangible resources or transformation of those resources, which are under some level of control of the company that adds to the company's value creation'. Intellectual capital is the science and art dealing with how to extract maximum value from the resources of a company and the way the company chooses to use them (Roos in Chatzkel, 2002). When examining the value creation logics of the three players in focus, we will describe them in terms of resources necessary for their different ways of operating. We argue that three different value-creating logics are applicable to the way authors, publishers and printers work. Those are the value chain (Porter, 1985), the value shop and the value network (Stabell and Fjeldstad, 1998).