Perhaps your company doesn't have an innovation problem.

For years, we've been prescribing the same solution to the business world: Innovate more.

Develop new products. Find new customers. Enter new markets. Utilize new technologies. Create new business models. Discover unmet customer needs.

I don't think any of this is wrong. Innovation is still one of the key drivers of growth.

But lately I think companies should be asked another question:

What if your problem isn't that you're not creating enough new value?

What if your company is already creating a significant amount of value for its customers, but isn't converting a large enough portion of that value into tangible economic results?

In other words, what if your problem is " value capture" rather than "value creation" ?

This distinction is not new. The strategy and business model literature has long discussed the difference between value creation and value capture. But in an era where AI has dramatically reduced production costs, this old question is being raised again, and with much greater force.

A study published by Gartner in August 2026 is, in my opinion, one of the important signals of this change. Examining 1,180 growth initiatives conducted in over 500 large companies, it shows that only 21% of the projects focused primarily on new product and service innovation; approximately 70% revolved around monetization and platformization.

Gartner describes this change directly as a "shift from value creation to value capture."

This doesn't mean the era of innovation is over.

On the contrary, it means there is a growing understanding that innovation alone is not enough to create a good business.

A company might develop a very good product. Customers might love it. Usage might increase. Sales might even grow. But if the company can't capture a sufficient portion of the value it creates economically, it may eventually experience margin problems, struggle to finance growth, or fail to generate the expected return for its investors.

This is where the difference between a good product and a good business model becomes apparent.

Imagine you've solved a customer's problem perfectly. The experience is great. The service is excellent. The customer is satisfied.

But you're pricing your product incorrectly. You're offering too many services for free. Your cost of service per customer is high. You're not cross-selling. You're not converting your existing customers into long-term relationships. You're not using the data you've collected over the years.

Such a company might be creating value for the customer.

But this value is lost en route before it reaches the company.

It doesn't translate into revenue. It doesn't translate into margin. It doesn't create retention. It doesn't lead to additional product usage. It doesn't translate into strategic assets like data, brand, or network effects.

I believe this is precisely the growth problem that many companies fail to address: value is created, but it leaks out.

The business world loves the question, "How can we create more value?"

Sometimes the more pressing question is:

Where does the value we create disappear?

AI makes this question even more important because artificial intelligence is increasingly driving down the cost of producing more things.

Coding is getting easier. Research is accelerating. Content creation is becoming cheaper. Product development is speeding up. Creating new features is becoming easier. Small teams are able to accomplish tasks that much larger organizations could only do a few years ago.

This is a great opportunity.

But it also creates an interesting strategic paradox.

If everyone can develop products more easily, simply "being able to develop products" may not be as strong a competitive advantage as it once was.

So where will the scarcity be then?

It may not be present in the product.

It might catch the customer's attention.

They may be able to reach the customer.

He/She can be safe.

It might be in distribution.

It might be in the data.

It could be a brand.

It could be related to customer relations.

And perhaps most importantly, it may lie in the capacity to sustainably convert a portion of the value you create for the customer into economic value.

In the age of AI, while the abundance of products increases , trust and customer access may become scarce.

Therefore, I believe that future growth discussions should not be based solely on the question of "what more can we produce?"

Snowflake's recent performance is an interesting example in this regard. Company management says that a significant portion of the accelerated growth is related to AI products. But the main story here is not simply "Snowflake is selling new AI products."

AI also increases the value of assets that Snowflake already possesses: its existing customer base, data platform, cloud ecosystem, and usage relationship.

We see a similar mechanism at Salesforce. Agentforce's growth doesn't just mean selling a new AI product; it means transforming Salesforce's years-long customer relationship, data, workflow, and distribution infrastructure into a new economic layer.

In my opinion, this will be one of the most important commercial outcomes of AI.

Companies won't just be selling new AI products.

They will use AI to better utilize their existing customer base, create more value for customers, increase retention, cross-sell, personalize pricing, and make their existing platforms more valuable.

This may require us to rethink our growth strategy from the outside in.

In our strategy development, we teach companies to constantly look outwards.

Where is the new market?

Who is the new customer?

What's the new product?

Which company can we buy?

What will the new technology be?

These are all important.

But sometimes the cheapest source of growth can be found already within the company.

Existing customers.

Installed base.

Data accumulated over the years.

Distribution network.

Dealers.

Employee know-how.

Brand trust.

Service organization.

Patents.

Intellectual property.

Community.

The company may have spent money on all these assets in the past. However, the economic value it has generated from them may be very low.

In this situation, constantly trying to dig a new well for growth is like ignoring the water reserve that already exists under the house.

Perhaps the CEO should therefore ask this question more often:

Which assets do we possess today but don't generate enough economic value?

This question also leads us to pricing.

For a long time, we treated pricing as a financial or commercial operation. However, from a value capture perspective, pricing directly becomes a strategy.

A significant number of companies still base their pricing on cost: cost + target margin = price.

But the customer isn't buying your cost.

He's buying the value you've created for him.

If a product generates ten million euros in economic benefit for the customer annually, but you only price it based on your production costs, you may be leaving a very large portion of the value you create to the customer.

This is not always wrong.

You might want to increase market penetration. You might want to create a network effect. You might want to keep competitors out. You might want to acquire strategic customers.

But this needs to be a conscious strategic choice.

Creating value is one thing.

Designing who will share the created value and in what proportions is another matter entirely.

Value capture deals with the second question.

Here I see an important link between customer experience and company economics.

For years, we've conducted CX discussions using indicators like NPS, satisfaction, effort, and the like. All are valuable. But if we can't demonstrate how customer experience connects to company economics, CX can easily be perceived as a "soft" management issue.

I think the new question should be phrased like this:

What behavior does the value we create for the customer change?

Is the customer staying longer?

Is he/she using more products?

Does he/she recommend us more?

Does it create lower service costs?

Are they more willing to pay the premium price?

So, it's necessary to see the following chain between customer experience and finance:

Customer Value → Customer Behavior → Economic Value

Once we establish this chain, the language used by customer experience professionals and the CFO will converge.

Here, we can better understand why "platformization" is so prominent when discussing value capture.

When you sell a single product, the value you create is often limited to what your own company produces.

When you create a platform, you enable others to create value within the system as well.

Partners, customers, developers, content creators, service providers…

In this case, the company can capture not only the value it creates itself, but also a portion of the total value created by the ecosystem.

Therefore, explaining the power of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or Salesforce solely through their products is incomplete. Their true power comes from building systems that enable other players to create value as well.

The question of growth then shifts from "what else can we produce?" to "how can we create a system where others can also create value?"

But an important line needs to be drawn here.

Value capture is not about getting the most money possible from the customer.

Raising prices without creating real value for the customer is extraction, not monetization. It may generate revenue in the short term, but it destroys trust in the long term.

Sustainable value capture is a two-way process.

The customer gains meaningful value.

The company also converts a reasonable and sustainable portion of the value it creates into economic value.

Perhaps this is the true art of good business models:

Connecting customer success to company success within the same mechanism.

Therefore, I don't see innovation and value capture as alternatives to each other.

Value capture is the missing second half of innovation.

In the first half, you create new value for the customer.

In the second half, you ensure that this value is transformed into sustainable economic value for the company.

If you can do the first thing but not the second, your customers may like you, but your company won't be able to finance long-term growth.

If you do the second thing but not the first, you might make money in the short term, but your customers will eventually leave you.

Strong companies do both.

The most powerful ones, however, reinvest the value they capture into data, brand, relationships, and learning, thereby driving growth once again.

Therefore, it makes more sense to me to think of growth in terms of three simple verbs:

Create. Capture. Compound.

Create value.

Seize the value.

Then grow it again.

I will continue to tell companies to be more innovative.

But I think we need to add another question to this advice:

How much of the value you create are you truly capturing?

Because in the age of AI, creating products can become increasingly easier. New features can be copied more quickly. The lifespan of technological advantages may shorten.

In such a world, lasting advantage may not come solely from creating new things.

This can stem from being able to reach customers, build trust, establish robust distribution systems, price correctly, and transform the value you create into a sustainable economic model.

So, before you ask “what else can we create?” at your next growth meeting, try starting with another question:

What value that we've already created are we failing to capture sufficiently?

Perhaps your company doesn't have an innovation problem.

Perhaps the real problem is that the value you create slips away from you.