HIWW Hamburger Institut für Wertschöpfungssystematik und Wissensmanagement

We have been exploring and researching industrial value creation for more than 10 years. In fact, across industries we can observe a paradigm shift from rather closed to more open approaches which we call bottom-up economics. We have learned that in many fields the value creation of the future is decentralized, collaborative and networked. Here, organizations are part of a value creation systems where external actors like suppliers, customers/prosumers and other communities are an essential and integrated part and value literally is being co-created along the value chain from ideation and product development to production. This situation requires a new, an interdisciplinary approach to management. Together with our customers, we explore new value creation patterns and analyze how they can be adopted and applied (e.g. open source business models). We help our customers to manage co-creation networks with efficient knowledge and community management, and support in finding and integrating online communities via new innovation formats such as online idea contests.