Revising results - AJETS vs now

As my supervisors ask me to add more data into my results chapter, I look again at the first draft of results from Oct 2007.

I attach the latest draft, and the Oct 2007 draft for your comparison.

The first draft was written, but not submitted to the AJETS - Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society.

Here is the AJETS file Oct 2007. ( attached 459k pdf)

Here is the latest draft Results file April 2010. (attached 1.5M pdf)

Institute of Value Management

I have been discussing my thesis with some Value practitioners from the UK. They raise some interesting questions which I will deal with shortly, when I find the time. I have posted them here to consider, and to share.

Richard

Good to find someone being so rigorous. I'm intrigued by your findings and the way that you present them, as far as I've been able to understand them from your blog. The outlines for HBR make good sense and it is time they paid proper attention to customer value as opposed to their usual cursory nod. I hope they take them.

I have few questions and observations which I hope might stimulate a dialogue:

1.I wondered about the impact of experience with similar or competing products - or from product trials - is that embodied in attitude in your model or am I looking in the wrong place?

2.In my non-rigorous work on this I have found it useful to separate strictly social (family and peer group interactions) from network enablement (community, society) as very different motivations seem to apply. Do you make such a distinction?

3.Further I have found that fit with complementary products and services is a strong driver. I tend to refer to systemic values when exploring these issues. Your research does not seem to have thrown up this concern (or am I missing something?)

4.You identify context, or relevance, as an influence but not narrative integrity (by which I mean the story I have about myself - does this product fit with my self-perception? will it help me build the story of me?) Again anecdotally I have found this to be significant and I usually try to explore this dimension with clients. Do you accommodate such a concept?

Finally I have found it useful to categorise items like necessary tasks and complexity as costs (usually in terms such as effort and cognitive load)/. This allows me to place them on the cost side of the value equation along with price, social exposure, status risk etc. I'm not clear how you envisage the benefit / cost trade-off working. Or is this too analytical for your model?

As a further aid to my understanding I wondered how your values compare with the set of universal values identified by Schwartz and summarised in the rather fuzzy image I attach.

Great work! I'd love to read the thesis.

Best wishes
D@IVM

Earlier comment from KS@IVM:

The origins of the IVM lie in the promotion of value analysis/value
engineering as originally developed by L.Miles. VM has however developed
from those origins where the focus was on manufactured products to encompass
all types of "products" and organisations. It is argued that QFD,
benchmarking and lean are all developments from VM approaches. More recently
VM has encompassed soft systems methodology and has considerable affinity
with systems thinking and concepts of the learning organisation. It is not
directly associated with earned value. I assume from your reference that
you are referring to what in the UK we call earned value analysis (EVA)which
looks at the ratio between percentage costs incurred and percentage
activities complete; as opposed to economic value added(also EVA!)as
proposed by Stern. I would argue that the latter involves a narrow
definition of value, while the former is only related to value if planned
activities can be shown to be relevant to achieving organisational
objectives whose achievement at an organisational level underpin value.

There is in Australia an equivalent organisation to the IVM
(www.value-management.com.au), and there is an Australian standard on VM.
The leading VM academic in Australia is Roy Barton(RTBarton@aol.com).

Institute of Value Management

1-3 Birdcage Walk | London | SW1H 9JJ

Tel/Mobile: 07919 470566

Our mission is to enable our members to develop and promote the professional
practice of managing sustainable value to secure and ensure economic and
social wellbeing for organisations and citizens in the UK and
internationally.

Find out more at ivm.org.uk

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Further academic discussion of Value Management from this perspective can be found at:

Managing value as a management style for projects
International Journal of Project Management, Volume 25, Issue 2, Pages 107-114
S. Male, J. Kelly, M. Gronqvist, D. Graham

The Economist debates Innovation

The Economist is hosting a debate on the proposition:

that innovation works best when Government does least.

See here - http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/168/Innovation.

FCC tests broadband barriers in America

CNN reports 'Cost is a major barrier to broadband adoption'.

The FCC conducted a survey (pdf) of 5000 landline and mobile users "in an effort to understand the state of broadband adoption and use, as well as barriers facing those who do not have broadband at home". The report found 67% of American households have broadband, with only 6% have dialup. Interestingly 13% of households earning over $75,000 do not have broadband, suggesting greatest internet problems were: pornography and other inappropriate material, and identity theft.

FCC define broadband as 200k up or down. See more at FCC Broadband home here.

I have found cost or price to be a universal value dimension, but one of twelve. Other universal value dimensions include function, service/reliability and time. Other value dimensions include beauty, emotion, simplicity, newness, duty, power, community and need.

Tipping Point found in Value model: Attitude counts

It's been a big january with the target rewrite. With the tight deadline, I had to dramatically shrink and focus the Ch3 results, with surprising result.

I focussed on two things.
1. The properties of Value.
2. A single value connection between Value and Attitude.
This connection is the simplest two concept model of value. I excluded the other six value concepts (social network, consumer strategy, innovator strategy, value assessment, action and context) and will include this as a complex value model in an Appendix.

I analysed the Value attitude connection through three propositions.
P1: Value is stored as attitude
P2: Value is stored as a single result.
P2a: Value is stored as a multiple result.
P3: Value shifts with new relevant value information. ie Attitude endures
P3a: Attitude degrades over time.

This has meant some reanalysis (of interviews, and other tech consumer comments), and complete (part 3.2) rewrite, which is almost but not quite done. ANother few days.

Significant new results:
1. Attitude exists at two levels: general, and specific (or sub-attitude). The latter linked to value dimensions, and the former not.
2. Attitude is mainly a single result ie general attitude, but some people have a multiple general attitudes - simultaneous opposing general attitude eg 'necessary evil'
3. The connection between sub and general attitude is the key to the 'tipping point'. General attitude tips or flips between positive and negative, while multiple sub-attitudes are possible against multiple value dimensions ie happy with price, unhappy with reliability, happy with service, unhappy with convenience etc etc etc overall either happy or not. Have excluded from thesis scope the link between sub and overall attitude. Think this is a whole thesis on its own.

Prefer not to have to cover attitude literature ie whole new lit review but may have to, subject to your feedback.
Att lit eg cognitive dissonance Festinger 1957, theory of reasoned action (multi attribute ie multiple attitudes) Fishbein and Ajzen 1975, balance theory Heider 1946, congruity theory Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum 1957. From Lawson, Tidwell et al Consumer Behaviour in Aust/NZ 1996.

4. General attitude would include tacit knowledge, while sub-attitude is explicit knowledge. if space/time would like to link to Polanyi. Perhaps in conclusion.
5. Attitude endures over time. No disconfirming evidence found. Though hard to prove a negative ie Popper.

I am conscious of my supervisor's need for quality, and my wife is cracking the time whip. I am in the middle.

I hope that now I have sufficient results for a significant contribution, while being simple (and tight) enough for the examiners to follow. And it will all fit in 80k words.

Revised Value Models: Properties and relationships

Value Model: Concepts / Properties:
(percentages represent how often the concept was found in consumers' experiences with 3G mobile phones; N=75,000 words).

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Value Model: Concepts / Relationships:

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Comments gratefully accepted....

Community vs Function: value dimensions contesting

'Monks', Apple loving fans, put off a Windows user, who prefers an inferior product 'I know Windows is awful' to being part of their community.

Good value leads to recommendations, but recommendations steal time and push one community's perspective onto outsiders, who may prefer to be outside, not inside that community.

Guardian writer, Charlie Brooker, explores his feelings towards the Mac evangelists, and towards Windows here. And covered on Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog here. Emotions sometimes trumps reason, so better products do not always make better sales (in the short term at least).