Three Types of Value Drive Performance in Digital Business

MIT CISR

Ina Sebastian reads MIT CISR's March 2021 research briefing, which she co-authored with Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner. See the text version and related content at https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2021_0301_ValueinDigitalBusiness_SebastianWeillWoerner. Abstract: Companies can create new types of value in the digital era. In our research, we identified three types of value from digital business: value from operations, value from customers, and value from ecosystems. All three types of value were significant predictors of company performance, although their relative impacts varied. In this briefing, we describe the three types of value and show how they are captured in company performance. We then illustrate how two companies, Kaiser Permanente and Maersk, designed digital initiatives to create value from ecosystems—a new type of value for many large, traditional companies.