Value Proposition Design through Bottom-Up Strategizing: The case of Loosely Connected Service Eco-Systems

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze suppliers’ readiness for bottom-up strategizing in an emergent market. UN sustainable development goals have ignited a need to engage grassroot suppliers in designing customer informed value propositions through collective bottom-upstrategizing. Collective strategizing is challenging for suppliers in service ecosystems, in particular in emergent markets where the suppliers are loosely connected, unorganized and lack structures, business operations, and insight in customer logics. Strategizing refers to collective sense making and bottom-up refers to involving other than managers to provide cues to the sensemaking process,
and “collectively defining strategic issues”. Strategizing requires co-activity and a dialogic mode, i.e., participants taking responsibility for providing cues and being open to dialogue.This iterative process is customer informed meaning that value propositions are aligned with customer’s needs, wants and expectations.
Study design/Methodology: We study readiness for and impediments of bottom-up strategizing among suppliers in a particular service eco-system in agribusiness, the game husbandry. This represents an emergent market for game meat in line with EU’s sustainability goals & recommendations. The number of possible suppliers in this loosely connected service ecosystem
amounts to 300 hunting teams, with 300 000 registered hunters, of which 20 hunting teams were selected to participate in the action research study. On average, 100 individuals participated in the 2-year long process. A multi-method exploratory study was conducted to identify, analyze and describe the readiness and impediments among the suppliers that participated in the process.
Findings: We identified key motivators of- and impediments for suppliers’ readiness to bottomup strategize, ranging from expressions of customer informed business visions to experiences of extensive perceived challenges in this endeavor. The factors were further synthesized into a bottom-up-strategizing readiness model that depicts a) three levels of supplier readiness for
bottom-up strategizing: 1) awareness and understanding of the customer logics, 2) competencesand 3) willingness to design customer informed value propositions, and: b) Three levels of impediments for bottom-up strategizing and designing customer informed value propositions: 1) non-profit identity 2) lack of business capabilities and 3) an inside out strategizing mode. Practical Implications: The readiness levels enable loosely connected suppliers in structureless service eco-systems in emerging markets to evaluate their readiness for bottom-up strategizing and meeting the demands of the market. The impediment levels enable suppliers to identify their own as well as their co-suppliers’ weaknesses alike. In conclusion, the developed readiness levels support suppliers to design sustainable value propositions in emerging markets.