The Thin Air Factory: The Value Chain Unchained

Abstract

The world of highly engineered, rigorously controlled and fiercely protected value chains and the equally controlled nature of the storytelling that accompanied them, is being unchained:

• By the rising expectations of society on how a company should behave in a world of finite and diminishing resources, fragile communities and precious ecosystems.

• By the momentous impact of technology, the brutal transparency and collective voice of the social networks.

If a company’s value chain is found wanting, it can now be acted against with expeditious, extensive and extraordinarily public effect with direct impact on the confidence, performance, value and reputation of the company. The dynamic and chaotic nature of this social unchaining demands a more adaptive approach to governance: one that can absorb the turbulence without the company losing its shape and authenticity.

This turbulence offers a number of interrelated opportunities for the enlightened company:

• If a company accounts and models for this human volatility, it can unlock new and expansive degrees of social resilience across the whole stakeholder constituency.

• The identification of a company’s unique and most compelling points of mutual desire, shared material and operational resilience, can be reconciled into a more resilient form of storytelling around which every stakeholder can be unified to common purpose. Ultimately resilient storytelling should become a source and driver of greater resilience in itself by creating and capturing more value along the value chain, while socializing the company to greater effect in a dynamic socialized world

• For those that are willing to approach it proactively, resilient storytelling will then be the key tool to engage across the internal and external stakeholder community to engender the shared resilience a company will need to survive.