Value networks are popular because of their simplicity, elegance and practicality. Adoption does introduce some new terms and new vocabulary. Users have found this glossary valuable.
Glossary of Terms (updated July 2009)
Attribute
An attribute is a descriptor that defines the characteristics of an object.
Business Model
This refers to a set of “rules,” interactions, and relationships that define how a business generates value.
Community of Practice
Communities of practice are networks of individuals who work together, sharing information and knowledge on a regular basis, that are held together by shared goals and a need to learn what each other knows.
Culture
Culture is the pattern of beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, norms of behaviors, and customs that exist in a society or a social set (e.g., employees of an organization).
Culture Assessment
Culture assessments are organizational profiles designed to discover patterns of human behaviors, beliefs, values, and assumptions that drive decision making and influence those behaviors.
Customer Capital
Customer capital refers to the intangible asset of an organization’s relationships with its customers.
Deliverable in a Value Network
A deliverable is the “thing” that moves from one role or participant to another role or participant. It can be a tangible product or service, such as a pair of jeans or a manicure. It can also be an intangible product (e.g., information or knowledge about something) or an intangible benefit (e.g., political support) that one person can bestow upon or give to another.
Deployment Flowchart (sometimes referred to as a Block Diagram or "Swim Lane"
This is a standard process tool showing the people or departments responsible for an activity and the flow of the process steps or tasks they are assigned.
Exchange in a Value Network
Exchange refers to two or more transactions between two roles or participants, and it evokes a quality of reciprocity (e.g., an exchange of money for service).
Exchange Analysis in Value Network Analysis
Exchange Analysis, a core analysis in the methodology, is an assessment of overall patterns and network dynamics of value exchange that determines if the value system is healthy, sustainable, and expanding.
Explicit Knowledge
Explicit knowledge is knowledge that is codified and conveyed to others through dialogue, demonstration, or media (e.g., books, drawings, and documents).
Flows (in organizations)
Two or more transactions that occur as a logical sequence are considered a flow. Examples of flows are business processes, communication flows, and chains of causality in which one event triggers another.
Flow Analysis (for sequences and causal chains)
This refers to techniques that can be used to explore different kinds of physical flows, and sometimes non physical flows, in which there is a time-ordered sequence or a chain of cause and effect. These approaches come from many different disciplines (e.g., systems engineering, total quality, and communications).
Feedback
Feedback is the return of information about the impact of an activity. It can also mean the return of a portion of the output of a process as new input. In a Value Network Analysis, feedback helps assess whether a role or participant’s outputs are gaining a reciprocal exchange.
Goodwill
Historically, goodwill has been considered as the positive disposition of a customer toward a particular enterprise. Goodwill, however, also includes any consideration of the company or its management that causes people to hold the company in high regard.
HoloMapping®
This is a non-linear systems mapping technique that shows the key transactions and deliverables between roles and participants in a network or organizational system. It was developed by Verna Allee in 1993, and is used in the trademarked ValueNet Works Analysis methodology.
Human Capital
This refers to the knowledge, skills, and competencies that reside in individuals who work in an organization, or that are embedded in the organization’s social networks.
Impact Analysis in Value Network Analysis
Impact Analysis, a core analysis in the methodology, is an assessment of the tangible/intangible costs (or risks) and tangible/intangible gains or value realization derived from an input that:
Generates a response or activity
Increases or decreases tangible assets (cost/benefit)
Increases or decreases intangible assets (cost/benefit)
Provides other positive or negative benefits
Influence
Influence refers to a person or power that directly or indirectly affects a person or the course of events.
Influence Analysis
Influence analysis can be conducted by using a diagram or matrix that can show the strength or impact of relationships.
Interdependencies
Interdependencies refer to the reliance of one role, participant, or event upon another for a triggering activity, support, influence, control, or conditions for success.
Intangible Assets
Intangible assets are resources under the control of an enterprise that are typically non-physical and not of a monetary nature, and that are critical for the success of the business. These resources include things such as brand image, customer and employee loyalty, quality of business relationships, social standing, competence of the workforce, improvements in internal structures and processes, and social citizenship. When these resources accumulate and are “held” by an entity, they are considered assets. Intangible assets may be converted to other types of value (e.g., products or services).
Intangible Assets Indices
Examples of intangible assets indices include the Intangibles Asset Monitor (IAM) of Karl-Erik Sveiby, Skandia’s Intellectual Capital Navigator, Verna Allee’s Intangible Value Domains, and adaptations of the Balanced Scorecard.
Intangible Value Domains
There are many different models of intangible value assets or domains. Verna Allee’s Intangible Value Domain model, and the default set of categories of her approach to Value Network Analysis, includes Business Relationships, Internal Structures, Human Competence, Corporate Identity, Social Citizenship, and Environmental Health.
Intangible Value in a Value Network
Intangible value is generated by informal, non-contractual activities that help build business relationships and contribute to operational effectiveness.
a) Intangible support exchanges include such things as strategic information, planning knowledge, process knowledge, technical know-how, collaborative design, and policy development. These exchanges flow around and support the core product and service value chain.
b) Intangible benefits are advantages or favors that can be offered by one person to another. Examples include offering to provide political support or a research organization asking someone to volunteer time and expertise to a project in exchange for prestige by affiliation. These intangible products or deliverables can be exchanged when people “trade favors” to build relationships.
Intellectual Capital
Intellectual capital is another term for intangible assets that include any knowledge of value to an organization, as well as its human capital, customer or relationship capital, and structural capital.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual property refers to intellectual capital over which a company enjoys a legally protected owner’s interest (e.g., patents, trademarks, copyrights, registered design, and trade secrets).
Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
See Performance Indicators or Measures.
Knowledge
In organizations, knowledge is experience, ways of working, concepts, beliefs, or principles – all of which can be learned, communicated, and shared.
Knowledge Management (KM)
Knowledge management refers to the facilitation and support of processes for creating, sustaining, sharing, and renewing of organizational knowledge in order to generate social or economic wealth or to improve performance.
Learning
Learning is the process of gaining knowledge or skills, or of developing a behavior through study, instruction, or experience.
Learning Organization
Learning organization refers to an organization that is able to adapt to change and move forward by acquiring new knowledge, skills, or behaviors, and thereby transform itself.
Mechanism or Channel Analysis
This is an analysis that determines the most appropriate technology and infrastructure support for each transaction or group of transactions in a value network.
Organizational Learning
Organizational learning refers to activities or processes whereby an organization exercises its collective ability to make sense of its environment and respond with more adaptive behaviors.
Organizational Network Analysis (ONA)
ONA involves the application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) as a diagnostic for business and organizational challenges.
Participants in a Value Network
Participants are individual people, institutions, or groups that execute the Roles in a value network. They can be individuals, groups or subgroups, organizations, collectives or aggregates, communities, or nation-states.
Perceived Value
A key focus in VNA, perceived value is how valuable other roles and participants perceive your deliverable to be. It is also how valuable you perceive deliverables received by you to be.
Perceived Value Analysis
Perceived Value Analysis is a way to assess the level of value roles or participants feel they receive from individual deliverables that come from other roles and participants, and from the network as a whole. Perceived Value usually is assessed as part of the Impact Analysis. The analysis is also done to assess what other roles or participants feel about the level of value of their deliverables
Performance Indicators or Measures
Performance indicators are either qualitative or quantitative metrics for assessing the quality or efficiency of execution of an activity, or for demonstrating progress toward a goal or desired outcome. The terms performance indicators and performance measures are often used interchangeably. Indicators is a somewhat broader term that can include second-order indicators that point to possible progress, even if that progress cannot be measured directly. More recently, the term key performance indicator (KPI), which refers to any aspect of human and business performance, has become part of the business language.
Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI is a cost/benefit comparison of the cost of an investment or activity compared with the financial and/or non-financial benefits that result.
Roles in a Value Network
Roles are the contributing roles in a value network. They are populated by Participants who generate transactions, send messages and other deliverables, engage in interactions, conduct processes, create value, and make decisions. They can be filled by individuals, groups or subgroups, organizations, collectives or aggregates, communities, or nation-states.
Scenarios
Scenarios are stories, similar to case studies, that describe a series of events. They are usually developed to test out the robustness of a model such as determining how a specific scenario might play out in a value network.
Simulations
These are dynamic models of how things change over time in response to events or critical variables. They can reveal important variables and system behavior patterns.
Social Network Analysis (SNA)
SNA is a social science discipline that focuses on relationships between social entities (e.g., members of a group), corporations, or among nations. It explores both directional and bi-directional exchanges, including sharing of information or types of business relationships.
Stakeholder
Stakeholders have an interest in, provide resources for, or are affected by an activity, change, or decision.
Stakeholder Analysis
This analysis is an evaluation of which stakeholders are most important, either for a system as a whole or for a particular activity. It helps determine who needs to be included in a system-level model or who would be affected by an activity, changes, or decisions.
Structural Capital
Structural capital refers to the infrastructure, routines, concepts, models, information systems, work systems, and business processes that support productivity and that stay behind in an organization when its employees go home.
System
A system is a whole that cannot be divided into interdependent parts without losing the integrity of the whole.
Systems Thinking
This is a way of thinking about and describing the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems.
Tacit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge refers to deeply personal experiences, insights, and know-how that are difficult to communicate in an explicit way.
Tangible Assets
Tangible assets show up on the financial balance sheet, for example as cash reserves, physical property, machinery, and accounts receivable.
Tangible Value in a Value Network
Tangible value is generated through contractual or mandated activities that contribute directly to economic gain. Tangible value transactions involve all paid or funded exchanges of goods, services, or revenue, including all transactions involving contracts and invoices, return receipt of orders, request for proposals, confirmations, and payment. Knowledge products and services that generate revenue (including products that are expected as part of service, such as reports or package inserts) are part of the tangible value flow of goods, services, and revenue.
Transaction in Value Network Analysis
A transaction is an activity generated by a person that involves imparting a tangible or intangible product, service, or benefit, or other deliverable to another role or participant.
Value Chain
Value chain is another term for a core business process consisting of tangible transactions involving goods, services, and revenue.
Value Chain or Value Stream Analysis
This analysis is a process view of how a business works. It focuses on inputs, processes that are applied to the inputs, and finally the output to the customer. Such views usually employ flow charts or workflow icons and tools.
Value Conversion
A key focus in VNA, value conversion is the act of altering or transforming one type of value into another. An example is transforming an intangible input or asset (e.g., industry insights and experience) into a tangible output (e.g., subscription newsletter).
Value Creation Analysis in Value Network Analysis
Value Creation Analysis, a core analysis in the methodology, is an assessment of the tangible and intangible costs and gains for each value output a role or participant contributes to the systems through:
Adding new tangible or intangible value
Extending value to other roles or participants in the value network
Converting one type of value to another
Value Network
A value network is any set of roles and relationships that generates social or economic good through complex dynamic exchanges of tangible and intangible value between two or more individuals, groups, or organizations. Any organization, group of organizations, or purposeful network in which people are engaged in creating social or economic good, can be visualized and analyzed as a value network, whether it is in private industry, government, or the public sector.
Value Network Analysis (VNA)
VNA is a whole-system mapping and network analysis approach to understanding tangible and intangible value creation among roles and participants in any purposeful activity, whether small work groups, organizations, business webs, or civil society networks.
ValueNet Works Analysis
Verna Allee’s trademarked but open resource (www.openvna.com) methodology for Value Network Analysis.
Value Realization
Value realization is the act of turning a value input, either tangible or intangible, into real gains, benefits, or assets – all of which contribute to the success of an individual, group, or organization.
Copyright © 1997-2009 ValueNetworks.com. May be used freely under Creative Commons License with acknowledgement of the source. This glossary was originally provided by Verna Allee www.vernaallee.com. | 
