This chapter investigates the impact of artificial intelligence on legal services. The questions addressed include: How will artificial intelligence change and improve the legal services offered by lawyers? How will the legal profession change as a result of the increased use of artificial intelligence? How will artificial intelligence change the way lawyers work and the way they organise, charge for and finance their work? A key insight discussed concerns the focus when thinking about the impact of artificial intelligence on the work of lawyers: concentrating on the ‘tasks’ that lawyers perform reveals more insights than asking whether artificial intelligence will destroy ‘jobs’. Exploring the impact on ‘tasks’ of lawyers shows that they are both consumers and producers of services augmented by artificial intelligence. Focusing on ‘tasks’ also helps in understanding what kinds of activities are affected by artificial intelligence and which activities will be performed, at least for the foreseeable future, by human lawyers. The discussion also deals with the emergence of multidisciplinary teams and the success indicators for LawTech start-ups.

Chapter Six investigates how distinct tiers of firms contribute to value creation and value capture in the automotive industry. It investigates the relationships between the firm’s position in automotive industry global value chains and global production networks and its prospects for value creation and capture in the context of the Czech automotive industry. It employs firm-level indicators to evaluate the value creation and capture of distinct supplier tiers in the Czech automotive industry, while considering differences between foreign-owned and domestic firms. The analysis suggests that the economic effects of the automotive industry largely depend on its capital intensity and that mostly foreign-owned higher-tier firms generate and capture greater value than lower-tier firms, which include the vast majority of domestic suppliers.

A business model is a framework for creating value by organizing available resources and activities to address a user need. As such, each product or service requires a business model in order to be commercialized. A business model can be embedded in a hierarchical or inverted firm. We start analyzing business models by exploring value configurations, an overall model of the value creation logic of the firm. A business model is a more detailed description of the structure of activities and transactions that enables the firm to deliver its products and services. It includes the description of the value created in the form of a value proposition, whom the firm targets to offer the value – the target market – and how it creates value – the implementation of the delivery in terms of key assets, activities, and partnerships. The value proposition and the target market together inform the company’s revenue mechanism that defines who is willing to pay for what aspects of the service under the current or expected competitive conditions. The key assets, activities, and partnerships inform the company’s cost structure, and, in particular, how much it costs to deliver the value proposition to the target market. Finally, these analyses allow the firm to assess whether and how to scale the business.

This chapter introduces business model innovation for sustainability as a new way of achieving corporate sustainability. Why is thinking about business models and business model innovation useful in this regard? Because business models are essentially about how companies create value for themselves and for their stakeholders, such as customers, employees or business partners. And value creation, in turn, relates in various ways to the natural environment and society. Hence, the business model perspective is very helpful in dealing with corporate sustainability challenges. In this chapter, we explain how business models support proactive approaches to corporate sustainability; how business model innovation can help integrate sustainability principles (such as efficiency, consistency or sufficiency) into companies’ activities; and how it can help companies extend their value creation potential to be more inclusive towards non-financial stakeholders. Finally, some patterns and tools to develop business models for sustainability are introduced.

The concept of value is deeply embedded in debates about the economy, yet it is also deeply problematic. There are many different ways of understanding value, including many that are not directly concerned with economic questions, and we must begin by establishing some clarity over which versions we are engaging with. This chapter will argue, however, that even the best-established economic understandings of value are radically unsatisfactory. It is therefore essential, before outlining a more coherent understanding of value, to clear some ground by explaining what is wrong with the established approaches. This chapter criticises three in turn: the theory of value implicit in the marginalist tradition in economics, Marx’s labour theory of value, and the notion of value at work in more popular discourses of value creation and value extraction such as the recent work of Mariana Mazzucato. This discussion, however, is not intended as a comprehensive critique of these traditions, but rather as a means to mark out the space that the argument of this book aims to occupy.

This chapter is the first of two chapters relating to business strategy and covers the most fundamental aspects in terms of strategic planning and positioning. The starting point is a discussion of the concept of competitive advantage, and how this relates to value creation. Different types of competitive advantage, based on costs and benefits, are discussed, and these are related to market positioning, targeting and segmentation. The relevance of price elasticity is explained in the context of positioning and competitive advantage. Various forms of integration are discussed, in terms of vertical, horizontal and diversification aspects. The nature, costs and benefits of each of these forms is explained. Recent trends in diversification are discussed, along with empirical studies. As with other chapters, case studies are vital in order to illustrate the management principles; in this case, three prominent tech firms are discussed in terms of their strategy development since their origins: Apple, Netflix and Tesla. Although all of them are high-cap tech firms of global reach, they each have quite different prospects.

1. To develop an understanding of the seven concepts of this book’s unifying framework.

2. To link specific types of transfers of firm-specific advantages (FSAs) across borders with the four corresponding multinational enterprise (MNE) archetypes of administrative heritage.

3. To describe the various motivations for foreign direct investment (FDI) and to explain the linkages among non-location-bound (or internationally transferable) FSAs, location-bound (or non-transferable) FSAs, and location advantages within each of the four MNE archetypes.

4. To define the ten often-observed patterns of FSA development and resource recombination in international business.

5. To explain the need for complementary resources of external actors, including those in the MNE’s stakeholder network and ecosystem, and the potential reasons for bounded rationality and bounded reliability when doing international business.

Some negotiators (such as US President Donald Trump) think of negotiation as a zero-sum game, others (such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel) as an opportunity for win–win. In reality, most transactions include both aspects. Paradoxically, negotiations require the creation as well as the distribution of value. While they can be compatible, often they are not. I show the six tactics that are required for each, thus arriving at the tactical paradox of the task. It is graphically illustrated by the symbol of Yin & Yang.