[MUSIC] We discussed in the previous videos the different aspects of value proposition, the who and the what. In this last part for the discussion about the value proposition, I'm going to show you a popular tool called the value curve. It's a way to detail the value proposition and display it graphically. It's very useful to compare different value propositions. For example, yours with one of your competitors, your current one and your future one, yours with the one of substitutes, and so on. The term and tool value curve, also called strategic canvas, appeared initially in three Harvard Business Review articles by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, as well as in their best selling 2005 book Blue Ocean Strategy. It's now widely used in companies for multiple purposes. Let's look at an example, the value curve of an average one star hotel. On the horizontal x axis, I have listed what we call value attributes, in other words, the factors of competition in the hotel industry. They also correspond, in fact, to the criteria that clients use to choose an offer. So here I have listed 11 value attributes including the room size, the aesthetics, the lounges, the eating facilities, the amenities one can find in the room, the reception and associated services, the silence, the hygiene, the bed quality, the location and of course the price. Of course a one star hotel, and this is why it's categorized as a one star, offers very little of each of these attributes. The y axis shows how much of each value attribute is offered by this particular category of hotels, it's also called the level of offer. If we then consider two star hotels, their value proposition is basically to offer more of each of these value attributes. So the value curve of the average two star hotels is almost parallel to the previous curve we have drawn. I can also use such a curve to compare a particular one start hotel value proposition, Sunshine Hotel, with the one of its competitors, Purple Hotel, by drawing their respective value curves. Let's look at the value proposition of a particular chain of hotels, Formule 1, comparing it to the average one star hotel and to average two star hotels. To do so, I'm going to superimpose this new value curve on the preceding ones. This graphical way of showing the value proposition of Formule 1 hotel chain is very striking. It jumps at us that Formule 1 has made radical choices, its value proposition is truly different. Its value curve is not parallel to the other curves, but crosses them. What has really happened is that originally, Formule 1 had very significantly reduced its offer for some value attributes, for example, very small rooms, and sometimes even simply eliminated some value attributes. There were no eating facilities and no reception anymore, it had been replaced by automated check in by credit card. And had at the same time increased its offer on a limited number of attributes, beyond the usual for this category of hotels, namely bed quality, silence and hygiene. They also added to the value attributes a new one, which did not exist until then in this hotel segment, the standardized no bad surprise experience attribute. Formule 1, a chain of basic hotels outside cities, close to a highway interchanges with automated check in has been an extremely successful business model, and one of the most profitable activity of the international hospitality group Accor for many years. What we have observed with Formule 1 is very typical of disruptive value propositions. Their value curves are always very different from the existing value curves, and they always present similar characteristics. They raise very significantly the offer on some value attributes, they create new ones and as well reduce or bring to zero the level of offer for some other value attributes. So we observe how they changed the rules of the game. Kim and Mauborgne's value curve has become very famous over the past years. If we step back a bit, we could say that Kim and Mauborgne have introduced in the field of strategy what has been used by engineers since the 1950s, the value analysis or value engineering. This approach was introduced at General Electric during the Second World War. In those turbulent times, raw materials and component parts were scarce, so engineers had to look for acceptable substitutes. They noticed that these substitutions often contributed to reducing cost, improving product features, or both. What emerged from a constraint turned into a systematic process called value analysis. With this technique, engineers analyze performance relative to costs. Very often they identify and remove unnecessary expenses not valued by customers, thereby increasing the value for the manufacturer and/or for the customers. By introducing value analysis in the field of strategy, Kim and Mauborgne have provided a useful way to depict customer choices and generate novel alternatives. After this presentation of what is a value curve, we are going in the next video to propose some practice through two exercises. [MUSIC]