Introduction to part III—moving toward mutual benefits and increased total value

In order to achieve business goals, companies are more and more seeking help from their external relationships. In some cases, these relationships form a system of their own with a common goal (i.e., a meta-goal). Such system-level goals, on the one hand, require input from more than one company and, on the other hand, they come with an expectation of higher total value (cf. Zott et al. 2011). By definition, organizing networks of companies for meta-goals and higher total value means avoiding sub-optimization and focusing on synergies rather than only on pure self-benefits, a viewpoint that often entails developing a long-term perspective. The essence of this part of the book is managing networks as value-generating entities (the right side of the main triangle in Fig. 14.1) and aiming at enhanced value co-creation and maximum value capture by the network actors.