Abstract

In the last decade some frameworks have tried to explain how to devise strategies for innovation in value by determining the needs of customers and non-customers, also creating new industries in which competition becomes irrelevant (Hax, The delta model. Reinventing your business strategy. New York: Springer, 2010; Kim and Mauborgne, Blue ocean strategy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005; Madhok and Marques 2013). These reference frameworks are based on a common set of principles: Value is created through the relationship with the customer (Priem, Acad Manag Rev 23; 219-235, 2007; Vargo and Lusch 2008); Strategy is considered to be a continuous process of exploring new opportunities, through observation of customer behaviour, intuition of opportunities (as a result of inductive reasoning) and the definition of value proposals characterized by being focused, clear, and original (Hax, The delta model. Reinventing your business strategy. New York: Springer, 2010; Kim and Mauborgne, Blue ocean strategy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005); agility and speed to intuit and capture new opportunities, as well as flexibility to operationalize them through experimentation and subsequent trial and error actions (Madhok and Marques 2013). This approach to strategy is relevant in the case of services with high customer contact, in which the management of the relationship with the customer is at the centre of the process of value creation, and in which the implementation of the principles previously mentioned produces links which lead the customer to perceive the value proposition as valuable, unique and irreplaceable (high switching costs). In this paper we highlight that a substantial part of the above principles are common to those proposed by TQM. The central aim of this essay is to show that organizations which have successfully implemented TQM are in an optimal position to find, define and create innovative value propositions.