Value Flow Map

Follow the money from the customer's payment to what is left for the owners, name everyone who takes a share on the way, and pick the one change that would let you keep more of the value you create.

Value creation and value capture is formal theory with mixed and limited empirical testing (Brandenburger & Stuart, 1996; Bowman & Ambrosini, 2000). The one-page mapping format is practice, not research, in the tradition of the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010). The power scale and the leak thresholds on this page are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• You are setting or changing a price, a channel or a partner deal and want to know who absorbs the difference.
• Revenue grows but profit or cash does not, and you suspect money leaves the business between the sale and your account.
• You depend on one big customer, platform or supplier and want to see how much that dependency costs you.

Skip it when:

• You need the economics of one unit or one customer: use 5.3 Unit Economics Sheet.
• The question is who wants what and why, not where money goes: use 5.2 Stakeholders & Incentives.

Value-based strategy rests on one sharp distinction: the value a business creates is not the value it keeps. Formal work models creation as the gap between what buyers would pay and what suppliers must be paid, and shows that what any player captures depends on its bargaining position in the chain, not on its effort or virtue (Brandenburger & Stuart, 1996). Bowman and Ambrosini (2000) pressed the same point: creation and capture are separate processes that firms routinely conflate. The honest caveat is that this is formal theory with limited empirical testing, so treat it as a lens rather than a law. The one-page format is practitioner craft in the tradition of the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010), widely used and without peer-reviewed validation.

That is why Step 2 lists everyone who takes a share before you look at your own margin, and Step 3 then finds what you keep and where value quietly exits. Step 4 reads dependency and the cash gap, because if capture follows bargaining position, concentration matters more than effort. Step 5 turns the map into one move.

Say what you sell, to whom, and how the money reaches you. If it takes more than one sentence, the flow is not clear yet.

Strong answer: "We roast coffee for cafés and sell retail bags through one grocery chain; cafés pay us monthly on invoice, the chain pays 60 days after delivery." Not: "We sell premium coffee."

What we sell, and to whom:

How we get paid (per unit, subscription, project, commission):

Our money flow in one sentence (customer, then who sits between, then us, then who we pay):

Illustrative example: the business and all numbers are made up.

A small coffee roastery in Gothenburg sells to 40 cafés and sells retail bags through one grocery chain.

Step 1: "Cafés pay us monthly on invoice; the chain buys bags at wholesale and pays 60 days after delivery; we pay the green-coffee importer in 30 days."

Step 2: a retail bag sells for 120 SEK; the chain keeps 35 percent, so 78 SEK reaches the roastery. The chain has power 5. The importer has power 4, since no second source has been tested. The bank's equipment loan takes a fixed monthly payment, power 2.

Step 3: value is created in roasting and freshness, but the chain captures the largest share through shelf access. Leaks: unsold bags written off (6 percent of retail), card fees on café webshop orders, and a roaster idle two days a week.

Step 4: the chain is 48 percent of revenue. The roastery pays for beans 30 days before it is paid for the bags made from them.

Step 5: close a leak and rebalance power: offer the chain a fixed weekly delivery in return for 45-day terms and a smaller first order per store, which cuts write-offs. Number: write-offs from 6 to 3 percent. Owner: founder; decide at the March review.