This book offers a novel perspective on doing business, arguing that the purpose of business is to create joint value for stakeholders through continuous innovation, with profit emerging as the outcome of this value creation process. Its core insight is that long term stakeholder value depends on sustained innovation, and that without creating value for stakeholders the long term generation of financial returns is unattainable. This logic positions innovation as the starting point of both business theory and business practice.

The book introduces readers to how companies create value through innovation in today’s business environment, which is shaped less by traditional, pipeline based value chains and increasingly by platform businesses that generate value not for a single, clearly defined customer, but for multiple stakeholders within a broader business ecosystem. It uses simple illustrations of its core concepts—such as the “value stick”—along with various case studies that demonstrate how these concepts apply in practice. Whether you are a seasoned executive, an entrepreneur, or a student, the book offers a fresh, entrepreneurial, and encouraging perspective on the fundamental concepts, tools, and principles of business.

Gerhard Speckbacher is Professor for Business, Strategy, and Financial Leadership at the Department of Strategy and Innovation at WU Vienna—University of Economics and Business (Austria). His lectures on the fundamentals of business, attended by more than 3,000 students each year, have been recognized with several teaching awards, including the prestigious Ars Docendi State Prize for university teaching.