It seems to me that every website proposal or start-up idea I see at the moment seems to quote value chains to support their pitch.
The concept was invented by Michael Porter in his book “Competitive Advantage“, published 1985.
For those of us who haven’t done an MBA and don’t know what a value chain is, we should get across them better – if only to know whether the line’s we’re being spun actually stand up to scrutiny or are just a load of crap.
(And for those of you who were in a certain BBC New Media internal briefing morning, don’t even get me started on the ‘toblerone concept’ of aligning strategies. OMG…)