Using the Research Value Chain to Communicate Impact

When I worked as an eLearning designer, I had the privilege of spending time with high-profile management consultants from global firms. One of the things I noticed right away about this group was that they got to play with some cool toys: frameworks, diagrams, and methodologies with catchy acronyms.

I felt like a kid let loose in the aisles of Toys R Us. As a literary scholar, I’d learned to use different theories to interpret texts, but I’d never before seen a theory neatly captured in a single graphic. To my analytical mind, there was something beautiful in such utilitarian simplicity.

Since then, I’ve found those consulting tools useful in many different circumstances. In academia, I’ve used them to coach students in business competitions and to teach analytical thinking and consulting skills. In my own business, Clarity Connect, I use them to help me gain critical distance on what’s happening at ground level and do strategic planning. When I’m coaching, they form part of the tool bag I bring to every engagement, and they sometimes prove relevant in unexpected situations.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about one of the most popular business frameworks, the value chain, and pondering how to use it to increase the social impact of Clarity Connect. In doing so, I’ve stumbled on another possible application: the business value chain also turns out to be a helpful tool for articulating and communicating the impact of research.

The Diagram that Revolutionized Business Strategy

The value chain has become a buzzword in today’s business world, but it started as a radical concept developed by a Harvard economist, Michael Porter.

The fundamental proposition behind the value chain is the idea that the function of a business is to create value. When a customer buys a product or service, that not buying a thing—they’re buying the value it provides to them.

Value is not the same thing as price; value determines price. And value is in the eye of the beholder. That’s why two coffee machines can do the same job (brew coffee) but sell at vastly different price points. If the customer values convenience, they’ll buy a Keurig. If they value cost-savings, they’ll buy the Canadian Tire brand. If they value an artisanal coffee experience, they’ll buy a pourover.

This emphasis on value challenged many businesses to rethink how they developed strategy. Before Porter introduced his theories to the marketplace, many businesses thought that the essence of strategy was competing on either the price or quality of the finished product. Porter dismissed that idea by showing how a business infuses value into its product through every aspect of its operations.

Enter the value chain framework, which you see below. This tool, which is now familiar to any student who’s taken Business 101, provides a systematic way for a business to consider how it creates value in each area of the organization.

The value chain divides into two types of business activities: primary and secondary. Primary activities describe the transactional core of the organization—how it acquires raw product, turns it into something saleable, sells it to the customer, and provides after-service care. Secondary activities describe the back-office functions that support the primary activities. Whether you work in industry, a not-for-profit, or a post-secondary institution, you’ll recognize all of these.

Image adapted from Stobierski, T. (2020, December 3). What Is Value Chain Analysis? Business Insights Blog, Harvard Business School Online.

So what does a business do with this pretty picture? A comparative example will be the best way to illustrate how the value chain can enable an organization to optimize the value it offers its customers as well as others in its ecosystem, such as suppliers, investors, and strategic partners.

Let’s consider two companies that are both in the business of building wooden sailboats. The first company, Speed Boats, is a large manufacturer that prides itself on producing world-class racing boats. The second company, Heritage Boats, is a small shop that distinguishes itself by producing handcrafted vessels that are “floating sculptures.”

The two companies share a similar production process, so as the diagrams below show, the blocks in the “primary activities” section of the value chain look a lot alike on the surface. But the way they handle each part of the chain adds a different kind of value.

Speed Boats serves customers who value speed, on the water and in the building and delivery process, so they make each primary activity as efficient as possible. Heritage Boats, on the other hand, serves customers who value artistic expression and view the boat they buy as an extension of their self-image. Throughout their primary activities, they concentrate on aesthetics and personalized service.

Using the Value Chain to Increase Social Impact

Earlier this month, I attended an energizing conference on “Social Enterprise Excellence.” (A social enterprise is an organization that runs like a business but also aims to produce a positive social impact.) Guest speaker Shaun Loney described an inspiring example of how to integrate social impact into various parts of the value chain.

Loney is the executive director of a Winnipeg-based social enterprise, BUILD, Building Urban Industries for Local Development. As a business, BUILD operates as a contractor, providing services such as drywalling and painting.

There’s nothing uniquely valuable about WHAT the organization does. If you compared BUILD’s work product with the work product of another Winnipeg contractor, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference. However, HOW the social enterprise operates differentiates it from competitors and makes it an especially attractive contractor for government projects.

The BUILD difference happens mainly in the “secondary activities” part of the value chain, in the Human Resources section. Rather than hiring experienced tradespeople, BUILD recruits and trains people who are on Employment and Income Assistance and have a criminal record. Their training program goes beyond the technical skills needed to work on a construction site. It also includes training in “life skills,” such as money management, parenting, and driving.

For government clients, BUILD’s approach to HR provides enhanced value that ordinary contractors can’t match. Besides helping to construct or repair a government building, BUILD also helps reduce government spending on income assistance and incarceration. When a government department hires BUILD, they are keeping people off EI and out of jail. They’re not just getting drywall installed they are also getting an effective solution to expensive social problems.

Introducing the Research Value Chain

What does all this business talk have to do with communicating the value of research and enabling knowledge mobilization?

You can create your own version of the value chain to articulate all the activities your research team engages in. As you do this, you’ll uncover hidden research stories you can share with your stakeholders, even long before your final findings are ready for publication.

To start creating your Research Value Chain, begin by describing your primary activities. These should include all the steps in your research process, from research design to data collection and analysis to publication and research dissemination. Then layer on your secondary activities, including all the back-office functions that enable your research to take place.

Once you’ve mapped out all the activities of your research organization, then consider how you’re adding value to your final product—your eventual findings—through each block of the value chain diagram.

For example, here’s what a Research Value Chain diagram might look like for someone using a Patient-Oriented Research (POR) approach to investigate diabetes among Indigenous populations in Canada.

As you work your way through the diagram block by block, here are some questions to help you identify the value you’re adding in each part of the diagram:

• What’s special about how you do what you do?
• What conscious choices have you made about methodology or approaches?
• How could you be doing what you do differently? Why is your approach more valuable to the audiences you want to impact?
• How are your stakeholders affected by the way you do what you do?
• What don’t your stakeholders realize about the way you do what you do?
• What are you proudest about when you think about the way you do things?

You might be surprised to see the research stories that reveal themselves when you reflect on the value your research is providing while it’s still in progress.

Turning Your Research Value Chain into Compelling Stories

As someone involved in conducting or mobilizing research, you appreciate all the different phases of a research project and the thought and effort that go into each of them. But as you may have learned the hard way, most stakeholders have little understanding of how research unfolds in real life (as opposed to the “Eureka!” moments that happen in Hollywood labs).

By using the Research Value Chain as a guide, you can generate an ample list of topics to share with your target audience(s). Rather than focusing solely on the final results of your research, which could be years away, you can start sharing behind-the-scenes stories about the choices you’re making and the impact you’re having now.

Research, like business, doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The value chain concept reminds us that all the activities that occur within an organization touch people and issues both inside and outside that entity.

From this perspective, “impact” isn’t synonymous with “end result.” It’s both ongoing and cumulative, both input and output, process and product.

The clearer you get about how your research is creating value throughout its lifecycle, the easier you’ll find it to craft communications that engage stakeholders and inspire them to join your mission.

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