Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption

by Thales S. Teixeira

Value-creation decoupling includes businesses that break the links between two or more value-creating activities. The decoupler offers one of these value-creating activities, while the incumbent that has been decoupled retains another value-creating activity. Twitch took videogame spectatorship for itself, but it does not develop videogames to be played. It left that activity for incumbents like Electronic Arts. And that was Twitch’s billion-dollar idea. In value-eroding decoupling, disruptors break the links between value-eroding and value-creating activities. In videogames, Steam allows customers to stream videogames over the internet, just as Netflix does for movies and TV shows.13 With Steam, players no longer have to get off the couch and go to a physical retailer (a value-eroding activity) in order to play a game (a value-creating one). For gamers, that’s a pretty big deal, and Steam’s success proves it. As of 2017, the company had more than 200 million users, with annual revenues of $1 billion and a value of as much as $10 billion.14 The third type of disruption, value-charging decoupling, includes businesses that decouple value-creating and value-charging activities. Mobile game developer SuperCell allowed consumers to play most of its games for free, charging value by selling digital goods (in-app purchases) to the company’s most loyal players. In effect, SuperCell broke the link between buying a game (value charging) and playing it (value creating). SuperCell is ...