Value Pursuit

The Value Pursuit tool is a game board that can be used in workshops to clarify how stakeholders in a specific PSS can be of value to one another, and which thereby helps identify shared goals within the project. On the Value Pursuit board, each participant must write down their contributory value and what challenges they face. Their potential value is then connected to other partners’ challenges. These connections are counted and represented by playing pieces on a second game board (resembling a radar) which visualises how much each partner gains and contributes to a network. For a network to thrive and trust to be maintained between network partners, these playing pieces should be aligned as much as possible – how much people gain from a network has to be balanced against their contributions.
 
This workshop tool has been tested in a series of case-study networks where, in each workshop, the role of facilitator has been different. One workshop was instructed and moderated by an employee of the organisation hosting the workshop, another was moderated by the service design agency participating in the workshop, and the third was conducted by the designer, Karianne Rygh. In order for people to moderate the workshop, sufficient instruction and preparation is necessary, this can easily be provided through a manual.
 
How It Works
Moving inwards from the outside on the Value Pursuit board, participants are asked to write down on post-it notes what their expectations, contributions (experience, expertise, solutions) and struggles (challenges or obstacles) are, in developing a specific PSS, or in reaching the defined common goal. After placing their answers on the board, participants are encouraged to take the notes with their contributions on and stick them on other participants’ struggles, showing how they can be of benefit to one another within the network. (In some cases this is also done by the use of stickers.) It is these connections that, through the use of this tool, become the new relations of value. In order to gain an overview of the potential status quo of the network, these connections are then counted and placed on a ‘radar’. Each participant has a large playing piece, which represents the number of potential contributions they have gained from other participants. The small playing piece represents how many contributions they have offered to the other participants. The large and small playing pieces should be as much in balance as possible, as people should gain as much as they contribute. The first game board is meant to collect information about how participants in a network can benefit from each other. The second game board visualises these gains and contributions, and uses the ‘radar’ to visualise the balance of contributions and gains in order to trigger further discussion. Through this combination – giving participants the opportunity to express their needs clearly and also visualising how these needs can be covered – stakeholders are provided with an overview that gives them a greater understanding of the value to be gained from the network.