Value Chain (Strat. Mgmt.)

A value chain is a set of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product or service for the market. The concept comes through business management and was first described by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.

The value chain framework quickly made its way to the forefront of management thought as a powerful analysis tool for strategic planning. The simpler concept of value streams, a cross-functional process which was developed over the next decade, had some success in the early 1990s.