#valuechain

Photo: Maize stored in a warehouse (AI-generated image).

Unlock Your Agricultural Potential for Export

This 2-month intensive consultancy is designed to revolutionize every stage of your agricultural value chain. We begin with a thorough diagnostics phase—mapping your current operations from input sourcing and smallholder coordination through to aggregation, processing, and final export logistics. By identifying critical bottlenecks and quality gaps, we lay the groundwork for targeted improvements in yield, post-harvest handling, and certification compliance (organic, fair-trade, and beyond).

Next, our experts co-create a tailored strategy and implementation roadmap that scales with your ambitions. You’ll adopt industry best practices for procurement, storage, and quality assurance, while building robust partnerships between farmers, processors, buyers, and regulators. Leveraging regional trade agreements like AfCFTA in Africa and RCEP in Asia, we pinpoint high-value export markets and craft market-entry plans that minimize risk and maximize returns.

But we don’t stop there. Through hands-on AI and digital tools training, you’ll deploy AI-driven marketing campaigns, and implement traceability platforms that strengthen buyer trust and command premium prices. We’ll also set up clear KPIs—tracking improvements in production efficiency, export volume growth, and quality consistency—so you can measure progress in real time.

Ready to elevate your agricultural operations to international standards and unlock sustainable export growth?

Read the full article now to explore the detailed program outline, meet our expert team, and discover how this consultancy can be customized to your unique context. Your path to global markets starts here!

(via Value Chain Analysis)

By Paul Sloane, at Destination Innovation

Do you want to innovate with your service or process? Here is an effective method which I use on innovation workshops. It involves analyzing and questioning every stage of your procedure.  Start by breaking the customer journey down into separate stages starting with when the client first encounters you or your brand through to them completing the transaction and any follow-up steps. Draw this as a block diagram and include as many steps as you can, both internal and external.

Now for each stage ask the following five questions in depth:

1. What is the purpose of this step?

2. What difficulties are experienced here? (By customers or by our people)

3. How could we add more value at this stage?

4. What could we do differently?

5. Could we eliminate, minimize or combine this step?

This is best done as a facilitated brainstorm with a diverse team including if possible one or two customers.

Do not skip the first question even if the answer seems obvious. There are always alternative ways to provide the fundamental purpose of the step. So it is important to agree what is the rationale and what is the prime added value for doing what you are doing. Who benefits from this step and in what way?

The second question is an exploration of the problems and issues that surround the process. List as many as you can. This includes cost, time delays and resource issues. The next three questions should be conducted in a very open-minded way with a large number of possible suggestions being listed and explored.

Select the best ideas based on agreed criteria – for example:

• Added Value for the Customer • Added Value for the Company • Feasibility

You are looking for something which is novel and a real win/win. A good example of this kind of process innovation is online check-in in the airline business. Previously you had to stand in a long line in order to check-in. Now you can use the internet at your home or office to check-in for your flight. There is added value for the passenger and the airline. Both parties save time. The first airlines to do this gained competitive advantage – now all airlines have to offer it.

Examine your value chain carefully using this method. It should lead to incremental and radical innovations and should help ensure that you and the customer get more added value from each step.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it at Destination Innovation.]

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An innovation colleague, Paul Sloane, is Editor of the Amazon best-selling business book, A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing: Advice from Leading Experts, with a foreword by Henry Chesbrough (Kogan Page, 2011). Cathryn Hrudicka, Founder, CEO and Chief Imagination Officer of Creative Sage™, is one of the contributing authors. You can order it here: http://amzn.to/OI_CS

Cathryn Hrudicka co-wrote the chapter, “Building the Culture for Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing,” with Gwen Ishmael and Boris Pluskowski — more information about all of the co-authors and the contents of this book is available at: http://bit.ly/OI_CS_Google

At Creative Sage™, we can help you maximize the value of your open innovation and crowdsourcing or crowdfunding projects and gain the insights you need to move forward most effectively. To discuss your organization’s situation, please feel free to give us a call, at 1-510-845-5510 (PST, in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley). You can also contact us by email and visit our web site for more information. We look forward to working with you and helping you get real results.

By Elexie Baccay

Last week I have mentioned about the intellectual capital of my organization where I patterned its result when utilized as a value chain of the company. The human capitals are the employees that form the organization structure. Each task performed by the people in the organization helps in the creation of the value. And, the knowledge and skills of the workers are defined on different levels based on their capabilities which empower delivery of the targets successfully.

When we had our discussions last Saturday, I became aware of the employee hierarchical positions, it is not just a drawing that shows levels of authority or responsibilities of the people. As illustrated on the C-Level Competencies, the aptitude behaviors are different at each level. I can relate to this is our department’s process of developing plans, several revisions are happening when plans are being criticized by the higher officers. It seems like going through filtration.