You Don’t Have To Be An Entrepreneur To Be A Value Creator

© 2025, Barry L. Linetsky. All Rights Reserved.

Article Summary (AI Generated)

This article explores the distinction between entrepreneurs and value creators, drawing on Bartley J. Madden’s insights from his book Value Creation Thinking. Madden argues that value creation is a broader concept than entrepreneurship, as it includes not only entrepreneurs but also innovators, managers, and other economic actors who contribute to wealth creation. The key to being a value creator is not just commercializing ideas, but ensuring that genuine value is delivered from the perspective of the consumer. 

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Bartley J. Madden makes an interesting distinction worth considering between entrepreneur and value creators in his book Value Creation Thinking (2016). In Madden’s thinking, value creation as a category encompasses a wider range of economic roles than does entrepreneurship. Madden puts it this way:

Based on his track record of innovation, one could easily label T.J. Rogers [and other innovative and successful business leaders like him] an entrepreneur. But entrepreneurs are typically associated with startup businesses, not CEOs of large, successful companies. A more accurate description would be to say he is a wealth creator. This is a more precise use of language because it encourages our thinking about relationships and the complex interdependencies involved with the process of how wealth is created. Wealth creators may be called inventors, entrepreneurs, innovators, managers, or whatever, yet they fundamentally succeed by “thinking smart” in order to solve problems, seize opportunities, collaborate, and motivate people. And they commercialize new ideas, as opposed to simply getting patents on inventions that never scale up to deliver value to a significant number of customers. (Kindle, Loc. 384)

Of course, if you are to be a legitimate value creator, you can’t just be in the “commercializing” business, which can include winners and losers. To be a successful value creator, you must take seriously whether actual value is created from the point-of-view of the consumer, which means creating and selling a solution that consumers determine are meaningful based on their own value-hierarchies within their own contexts-of-use. 

Value creators in Madden’s view are commercializers, i.e., marketers, and as such they are value-facilitators by means of producing consumer-desired value-propositions. Value is created only to the extent that products and services are aligned in ways that consumers approve through price signals and satisfy consumer preferences. It is from this value that reciprocal value is “transferred” back through the value-chain to create a viable profitable economic ecosystem. 

Barry Linetsky is CEO of Cognitive Consulting, Inc., and a retired Partner with The Strategic Planning Group in Toronto, Canada, where he and his colleagues have been helping executives and owners define and align their business purpose with customer values since 1994. Barry is the author of the acclaimed business biography The Business of Walt Disney and the Nine Principles of His Success (2017). His most recent books,Understanding and Creating Vision and Mission Statements (2020),Understanding and Creating Strategic Performance Indicators and Business Scenarios (2020), and Understanding and Creating Critical Success Factors (2021), each co-authored with Dobri Stojsic, are available from amazon. Barry’s articles have been published by Ivey Business Journal, Rotman Magazine, Mises Wire, and the Economist Intelligence Unit in conjunction with Harvard Business School. Barry is also a writer, researcher, analyst, photographer, and business strategy enabler. Read his blog and learn more at barrylinetsky.com. Follow him on Twitter @BizPhilospher.