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Chapter 4
Creating Missionary Resolve
When I think of the term value creation, I think of an empty vessel.
Certainly, the consuming public wants valuable stuff. To the extent that any
of us learns what customers value and then finds a way to produce it in a
way that makes them willing to pay more than its commodity cost, we’ve
created value and, by association, profitability.
But we know that truly great companies don’t just cast about ran-
domly looking for ways to make money simply for the sake of making
money. That’s why they have mission statements. Value creation needs
a preferred social context to bind producers to consumers of that valu