On the Development of a Modelling Framework for Value Co-creation

Western countries have transitioned from a goods-oriented economy to a servicesoriented economy. Marketing literature suggests that the notion of economic exchange, core to the economy, has shifted from following a goods-dominant logic to a servicedominant logic. These sources also observe how this transition results in a growing awareness that value, and value co-creation in particular, should be taken as a (if not the) leading factor in the design of the service systems that drive the service economy. This results in the challenge of ensuring that the modelling frameworks used in designing different aspects of service systems, indeed also cater to the design of value co-creation aspects. In line with this, this paper reports on ongoing work towards the development of a modelling framework, called ValCoLa,4 that also caters to the design of value co-creation constellations. We start by further clarifying the need to include value co-creation aspects in the regular modelling frameworks used when designing / architecting service systems. We then continue by exploring the concept of value co-creation from the perspective of marketing literature. This also results in the observation that a stable definition of the underlying concepts has not yet been reached, while an understanding of the actual design challenges confronting enterprises in practice is also lacking. We finalise this paper by critically reflecting, from a design science perspective, on the best strategy to develop the envisaged language framework. In doing so, we will also include experiences in the development of the ArchiMate enterprise architecture modelling language. This results in some key strategic choices for the development of ValCoLa.