Beauty – Competing on significance

2. Beauty – Competing on significance SCCV 2010 Per Åman

3. Issues • What is ’beauty’? • -What is ‘beauty’ as sustainable competitive advantage? • -How may ‘beauty’ be integrated and combined • with other sources of sustainable competitive advantage?

4. Outline Lectures Readings Group assignments (pass/ not pass) DBA – deconstructing’beauty’ in architecture DBC - deconstructing ’beauty’ in commerce IBS – integrating ’beauty’ in business strategy Final paper

5. firms successfully produce things and services that aren’t terribly useful from a rationalistic and utilitarian vantage point

7. Microeconomics: Economic value and functionality?

8. Competitiveness recap Best Big Customerorientation, Differentiation Market perspective Resourceperspective Scale, scope Market dominance Expansion Fast Dynamiccapabilities ..through the valuechain; logistics ..to the market; innovation ..response; learning and change management Per Åman, PhD

9. Sources of business success Scale, scope and market dominance Customerorientation and differentiation Operationalefficiency, learning, innovation and change Per Åman, PhD

10. Ericsson, late 1990s Be first, be best, be costefficient Kurt Hellström

11. the argumentation is based on an economic/ technical rationality materialistic utility maximizers, they value individual benefit over group and societal benefit, they are rational or boundedly rational given the utility fuction, and whose engagements are above all means to an end.

12. much contemporary competitiveness can be argued to be the result of an empathic understanding of human irrationality and idiosynchracies this alternative view sees the human agent as relational, actively seeking value-based social interaction. People are intrinsically motivated to self-actualize, and have no preconceived utility function, but where discourse and continuous exchange shapes their interests, needs and wants

13. Madonna

14. Lady Gaga

15. The ’beauty’ gap Anecdotal/ observations Empiricalassessments

16. A phenomenon Firmscompete and operate on othergroundsthanutilitarian This form of competition is of considerableeconomicimportance Technical/ economicexplanations are not enough to understand the sustainablecompetitiveadvantage of this competitivebehavior

17. Substance and significance

18. Darwin’s dilemma Selectionbased on functionality; ’survival of the fittest’ Selectionbased on attraction Per Åman, PhD

19. Functionalvalue Aestheticvalue Symbolicvalue

20. Significance Substance Per Åman, PhD

21. ”Finding and holding a firm’s moral and strategic center in a competitive market is a calling and an art, not an engineering problem.” Russell A. Eisenstat, Michael Beer, NathanielFoote, Tobias Fredberg, and Flemming Norrgren HBR July-Aug 2008 Managerial purpose Management techniques Per Åman, PhD

23. Managerial purpose SCA ? Historicalpathdependency Tacitness Social complexity Causalambiguity Management techniques Per Åman, PhD

24. ’beauty’ [massnoun] a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aestheticsenses, especially the sight: I wasstruck by herbeauty | an area of outstanding naturalbeauty. • a combination of qualities that pleases the ... (From The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised)

25. beauty → noun (pl. beauties) 1. [massnoun] a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aestheticsenses, especially the sight: I wasstruck by herbeauty | an area of outstanding naturalbeauty. • a combination of qualities that pleases the intellect. • [as modifier] denotingsomethingintended to make someonemoreattractive: beautytreatment. 2. a beautiful or pleasingthing or person, in particular: • a beautifulwoman: a blonde beauty. • an excellent example of something: the fishwas a beauty, around 14 pounds. • (the beauties of) the pleasing or attractive features of (something): the beauties of the English countryside. • [in sing.] the best aspect or advantage of something: the beauty of keepingcats is that theydon't tie you down. → adjective (Austral./NZinformal) good; excellent (used as a general term of approval). beauty is in the eye of the beholder (proverb) that whichone person findsbeautiful or admirablemay not appeal to another. beauty is onlyskin-deep (proverb) a pleasingappearance is not a guide to character. - ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French beaute, based on Latin bellus ‘beautiful, fine’. The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press

26. ’aesthetics’ aesthetics (Gk. aisthesis, perception) Specializedbranch of philosophyconcerned with the arts. Plato'sclassicalformulation of art as a mirror of naturewasdeveloped by Aristotle in his Poetics. As a distinctdiscipline, aesthetics dates from Alexander Baumgarten'sReflections on Poetry (1735). Common problems in aestheticsinclude a definition of beauty and the ascribing of artisticvalue. For Plato and Aristotlebeauty is objective, it resides in the object. WhilePlatoargued that art represented the form of particularobjects, Aristotlebelieved that art imitated a universal essencethrough a particular form. David Hume argued that the value of art wasdependent on subjective perception. In Critique of Judgement (1790), Immanuel Kant mediatedbetween the two, arguing that artisticvaluemay be subjective, but it has universal validity in the form of pleasure. Later philosophers, such as George Santayana and BenedettoCroce, focused on art as a sociallysymbolicact. World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press

27. Aesthetics as a form of knowledge • Not analytical, reductionist or logico-rational • Holistic • Immediate • An experience • Tacit • A sense of beauty, ugliness, grotesque… • Connectedness

28. Sensory abilities • Eyesight Visual • Hearing Auditive • Touch Tactile • Smell Olfactory • Taste Gastronomic

29. Aesthetic philosophy • The Greeks • Medieval times • Kant and the romantics • Postmodernism • Contextual aesthetics