Value is Subjective

When I read the article about business models, I was very interested in the premise of the article. But really one line and concept caught my attention: "business models should not be concerned merely with the financial aspect of a business' they should deal with other aspects such as value creation" (Cha 61). The reason for this is because of my personal experience. The background information is this:

1. I have spent the past two summer working in finance, once in private equity and once in investment banking. 

2. After my summer in investment banking, I decided the industry was not the direction I wanted to head.

There was a very important reason I preferred private equity over investment banking. You could probably guess based on the first paragraph of this post: value creation. Private equity focuses on transforming businesses and finding the places where weak businesses have underapprecaited values. Investment banking doesn't appreciate companies in the same way. Despite my experience, I did a quick one-eighth in my career path because I started seeing value creation in a new light. 

Value creation has a number of different meaning and direction. It's extremely relative to what people value in their own lives. That's how I got to where I am today, which is an incoming teacher at an inner city school in Houston through Teach for America. Back in November, I had 3 offers on the table: two financial institutions and TFA. I sat down as the offer clocks were ticking and thought about what I wanted out of my life. Value creation was where my mind jumped. Then I remembered that value is subjective. What kind of value did I want to create? Did I want to create value in the financial portfolios of high net worth individuals? Did I want to create value in companies by transforming their business models? Or did I want to create value by investing in the next generation of leaders in America through early childhood education? I settled on the last. And I'm glad that I did. I don't know how I will determine value in the next 5 years, but for now that is where it is for me. 

My point in saying all of this is what the article says, as well. Value has to be created uniquely in every organization, industry, or field. All of the different social media sites have to find where their value is and leverage that. There is not "one size fits all" for value, and I think this is the main point of this article and a great lesson for all of us to learn. Obviously this article is clearly discussing value in terms of business models, but I think it really is getting to the heart of true value. 

This video provide an interesting view on business value creation, and is a great source of information when it comes down to understand where and how we can create value in a way that can be applied to a number of different jobs and industries.