Unlocking value

I had an almost embarassing experience while using microsoft word. I was supposed to prepare a report that involved representation of data collected from a survey. My experience in using microsoft word thus far is just using the editing functions, copying and pasting, changing fonts and paragraphs and maybe inserting mathematical equations. All of which I had learnt on my own, through trial and error. I knew that I had not really deployed the software maximum's ability but I was happy. Up until two days ago, that is. I had to figure out a fast way of inserting graphs and charts directly into the word document  (without going to excel and copying and pasting ----that I knew how to do). Time was running short and I had no choice but use my charm (my operant resource) on my operand resource*, which came in the form of my daughter Sakinah. I knew she had the knowledge ( which is her operant resource*) because I had the opportunity of printing her folio report for school ( one of the things parents do for their children). It was beautifully done complete with bar charts and histograms ( I remembered thinking...how did she do this all on her own? I knew later that it was knowledge that she got from her ICTL class). So, anyway to cut a long story short, I swallowed my pride and asked her to show me how to do "the insert a chart thing, complete with data, percentages, legend, labeling etc".

The whole episode with me and microsoft word and the very easy (as I found out later) task of inserting charts demonstrates an important idea in service science which is known as 'unlocking value'. I was not able to unlock the full value without resorting to available operand and operant resources. It is also interesting to note that in Microsoft Corp. they do have people in charge of finding ways and means of unlocking value of their products as can be seen from this 2007 report in Bloomberg Business Week http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2007/bs20070607_329811.htm

The article reports on the experience of an employee at Microsoft whose job is about unlocking the value of Microsoft office products.

The value of a cake lies in the eating and sharing. Thanks

to my students, it was an experience I will not forget :)

* knowledge is an operant resource as are many other intangilbles like skills etc; operand resource are tangible resource like raw materials, people etc; operand resource  are usually acted upon maybe by operant resource to produce something useful (of value)

Ref: Lusch and Vargo : The service dominant mindset