Value Networks - Emergence and Transformation of Business in Global Competition
The ValueNet Consortium focuses on the dynamics and management of value networks. Networks represent new forms of carrying out collaborative innovation, production and marketing. Networks have been shown to increasingly replace traditional markets, joint ventures, and hierarchical corporations in the global, knowledge-based competition. Besides increased efficiency and pooling of resources, networks are seen to offer flexibility, access to new resources and capabilities, and opportunities for combining the knowledge of local and global actors. In spite of these high expectations towards networks, their creation, emergence, and management remain relatively unstudied.
The ValueNet Project (VNP) addresses two interrelated research themes: (1) How new business fields are being constructed through interorganizational business networks and how firms try to strategically influence this emergence; (2) How the combined forces of new information technology and global competition transform the established business fields, what are the changes in their value networks, and how can companies maintain their viability and competitiveness in the transformation. Answers to these questions will help us to make a major international contribution to the emerging theory of complex business networks and their management. The new knowledge to be produced deepens our understanding of the processes and mechanisms of how new business fields are created and how the fields are being transformed. It provides firms with managerial suggestions for how not only to survive in global competition but also how to influence and even manage it.
The strength of the VNP is based on the shared theoretical base of the partners, which allows them to collaborate intensively, and the individual strengths and perspectives that each partner brings into the research project. The markets-as-networks perspective and business network theory form the base supported by the resource and capability based view. Members of the ValueNet Consortium are Helsinki School of Economics, Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Oulu, and Åbo Akademi University. In addition, the Consortium co-operates with a number of national and international research partners.
Contact information:
ValueNet Project leader
Prof. Kristian Möller
Department of Marketing and management
Helsinki School of Economics
P.O. Box 1210, 00101 Helsinki
Tel. +358 9 431 38515
Email kristian.moller(at)hse.fi
ValueNet Project coordinator
Mika Westerlund
Department of Marketing and management
Helsinki School of Economics
P.O. Box 1210, 00101 Helsinki
Tel. +358 9 4313 8586
Fax +358 9 4313 8660
Email mika.westerlund(at)hse.fi