The value chain describes the full range of activities that firms and workers do to bring a product from its conception to its end use and beyond. This includes activities such as design, production, marketing, distribution and support to the final consumer. Value chain activities can occur within or between firms, within a single geographical location or spread across wider areas, and can produce goods or services. The overall goal of the value chain is to create value that exceeds the cost of providing a product or service, thus generating a profit margin. The concept of the value chain is at the early stages of a journey and many people still think conventionally. Building Effective Value Chains challenges this notion, helping people to think differently and to pursue the right goal in business. Building Effective Value Chains gives practical, easily understood advice on enhancing the value chain, supported by case studies from the public and private sector that illustrate how the methodology can be applied to different value chains. The book also considers the commercial value of the value chain as well as the academic origins of the value chain. Author Tom McGuffog shares his knowledge and experience from working in Rowntree and Nestle, the UK Procurement Agency, the Defence Logistics Organisation, and NHS Purchasing and Supply. Taking a global perspective, the issues discussed in this book are applicable internationally. Building Effective Value Chains includes executive summaries at the end of each chapter, useful online materials, and a comprehensive list of references.

Value chain based approaches offer tremendous scope for market-based improvements in production, productivity, rural economy diversification, and household incomes, but are often covered by literature that is too conceptual or heavily focused on analysis. This has created a gap in the information available to planners, practitioners, and value chain participants. Furthermore, few references are available on how these approaches can be applied specifically to developing agriculture in Africa. 'Building Competitiveness in Africa s Agriculture: A Guide to Value Chain Concepts and Applications' describes practical implementation approaches and illustrates them with scores of real African agribusiness case studies. Using these examples, the 'Guide' presents a range of concepts, analytical tools, and methodologies centered on the value chain that can be used to design, implement, and evaluate agricultural and agribusiness development initiatives. It stresses principles of market focus, collaboration, information sharing, and innovation. The 'Guide' begins by examining core concepts and issues related to value chains. A brief literature review then focuses on five topics of particular relevance to African agricultural value chains. These topics address challenges faced by value chain participants and practitioners that resonate through the many cases described in the book. The core of the book presents methodological tools and approaches that blend important value chain concepts with the topics and with sound business principles. The tools and case studies have been selected for their usefulness in supporting market-driven, private-sector initiatives to improve value chains. The 'Guide' offers 13 implementation approaches, presented within the implementation cycle of a value chain program, followed by descriptions of actual cases. Roughly 60 percent of the examples are from Africa, while the rest come from Europe, Latin America, and Asia. The 'Guide' offers useful guidance to businesspeople, policy makers, representatives of farmer or trade organizations, and others who are engaged in agro-enterprise and agribusiness development. These readers will learn how to use value chain approaches in ways that can contribute to sound operational decisions, improved market linkage, and better results for enterprise and industry development.

This book cuts through the strategy verbiage to get to the fundamentals of business strategy—its meaning, formulation, and implementation. Challenges to understanding strategy are examined, including institutions and national culture. Strategy theories are not just explained but assessed in terms of their validity, limitations, and applicability across countries, cultures, and organisations. The thinking and works of major strategists like Ohmae, Mintzberg, Porter, Rumelt, Barney, Prahalad, Hamel, Peng, Kim, and Mauborgne are reviewed in the context of strategic thinking, strategy formulation, and strategy implementation. The confusion and consensus in strategy are highlighted. While not prescriptive in terms of telling the corporate leader how to formulate strategy, for there is no one best strategy or one best way to formulate strategy, the book does identify broad approaches to corporate strategy formulation and implementation and the underlying principles. To this extent, corporate leaders and students and instructors of business and management will find the book informative and instructive.

This book uses the examples of local supply firms in China and Brazil and their connections to the global automotive industry to explore the nature of current global value chains. It argues that lead firms make use of product architecture to globalize their procurement and supply chain management and that they effectively restructure the global supply base by internationalizing the most capable supply firms, thereby creating oligopolies controlled by the lead firm. The book goes on to contend that some firms have gained such powerful positions that they have gained a degree of control over other firms without the necessity of ownership – altering the mechanics of governance. Also, it shows how, although some supply firms from emerging markets have utilized their business ties with western assembly firms to upgrade themselves within the global value chain, most are squeezed out through increased global competition. Overall, the book makes a major new contribution to the economic theory of governance.

Business to Business (B2B) markets are considerably more challenging than consumer markets and demand a more specific skillset from marketers. B2B buyers, often dealing with highly complex products, have specialist product knowledge and are far more knowledgeable and demanding than the average consumer. This textbook takes a uniquely international approach to this complex environment, the result of an international team of authors and real-life cases from across the globe. This new edition has been fully revised with new and updated case studies from a variety of regions. Every chapter has been brought in line with current business to business research, alongside new coverage of non-profit and government marketing, digital marketing, ethics, and corporate social responsibility. Other unique features include: • The placement of B2B in a strategic marketing context. • A full discussion of strategy in a global setting including hypercompetition. • A detailed review of global B2B services marketing, trade shows, and market research. More selective, shorter, and easier to read than other B2B textbooks, this is ideal for introductory B2B and intensive courses. It is also comprehensive enough to cover all the aspects of B2B marketing management that any marketer needs, whether they are students or practitioners seeking to improve their knowledge. The textbook is also accompanied by an extensive collection of resources to aid tutors, including a full set of PowerPoint slides, test bank of questions, and practical exercises to aid student learning.

This work provides a preliminary analysis of the key climate risks affecting agrifood value chains and opportunities for climate services that reach stakeholders involved in all stages of the value chain, from agrifood production to harvest, storage and refrigeration, processing and packaging, transportation, markets, trade and consumption. Climate services provide opportunities to effectively and comprehensively mainstream climate risk management across the entire agrifood value chain, in addition to increasing sustainability and efficiency in the face of changing climate conditions. This report provides significant primary information and recommendations on the development of climate services across the agrifood value chain with a view to systematically enhance sustainable and resilient opportunities. It also provides a basis for further research and investment funding in this area. Its findings could spark follow-up research and public and private investment.

At the start of CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) Phase 2 in 2017, and later during the priority-setting round in 2019, each of the PIM research areas (‘flagships’) formulated key research questions they aimed to answer and identified theories of change and pathways to achieve impact. In this series, we share highlights of what we have learned and achieved and suggest areas to be explored in the future.

Topical Issues of Rational Use of Natural Resources 2019 Vol. 2 contains the contributions presented at the XV International Forum-Contest of Students and Young Researchers under the auspices of UNESCO (St. Petersburg Mining University, Russia, 13-17 May 2019). The Forum-Contest is a great opportunity for young researchers to present their work to the academics involved or interested the area of extraction and processing of natural resources. The topics of the book include: • Geotechnologies of resource extraction: current challenges and prospects • Cutting edge technologies of geological mapping, search and prospecting of mineral deposits • Digital and energy saving technologies in mineral resource complex • Breakthrough technologies of integrated processing of mineral hydrocarbon and technogenic raw materials with further production of new generation materials • The latest management and financing solutions for the development of mineral resources sector • Environment protection and sustainable nature management • New approaches to resolving hydrocarbon sector-specific issues Topical Issues of Rational Use of Natural Resources 2019 Vol. 2 collects the best reports presented at the Forum-Contest, and is of interest to academics and professionals involved in the extraction and processing of natural resources.

These guidelines aim to respond to these questions and support practitioners in translating the Gender-Sensitive Value Chain Framework, developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) into action (FAO, 2016a). Building on FAO’s comparative advantage on gender in agriculture and food security, these guidelines are primarily intended to assist practitioners in designing and implementing interventions that provide women and men with equal opportunities to benefit from agrifood value chain development. They offer practical tools and examples of successful approaches to foster a more systematic integration of gender equality dimensions in value chain interventions in the agricultural sector and enhance the social impact of these interventions.

This Companion provides a review of global value chains (GVCs) and the megatrends that are shaping them and will continue to reshape them in deep-set trajectories of change over the next few decades. Megatrends herald both challenges and opportunities. With the growing interest among business leaders and researchers in GVCs, this is a reference work which fills a gap in current literature by focusing on the new features of GVCs, including the shift of global purchasing power towards developing economies, the significance of emerging technologies and data analytics, the increasing tensions between globalisation and de-globalisation, and the role of micro-multinationals, start-up entrepreneurs, the public sector and middle markets in a fast-changing global economy. The early chapters are essentially intradisciplinary in character, with the first seeking to explore some historical aspects of GVCs. Subsequent chapters cover the theory and practice of operations and supply chain management, emerging supply chain technologies, and the impact of inter-firm collaboration across sectors and economies. The final chapters take a more interdisciplinary approach and examine topics at the interface of GVCs with the economy, society, culture and politics. This comprehensive handbook provides a timely analysis of leading-edge global megatrends and practices in one volume.