Who Is Thales Teixeira?

Thales Teixeira is a former professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain.” He studies a few core business phenomena of the digital age such as unbundling, disintermediation, coupling, decoupling, and innovation.

disruptive-business-models

As pointed out in the book “Unlocking The Value Chain” by Thales Teixeira, business model disruption has followed three waves: unbundling (1994-99), disintermediation (2000-05), and decoupling (2005-onward). Today what’s disrupting the business world is the wave of decoupling. That consists in breaking the customer value chains by identifying valuable activities that can be performed by the decoupler, which can capture a good chunk of the business value from incumbent companies.

unbundling

Unbundling is a business process where a series of products or blocks inside a value chain are broken down to provide better value by removing the parts of the value chain that are less valuable to consumers and keep those that in a period in time consumers value the most.

disintermediation
Disintermediation is the process in which intermediaries are removed from the supply chain, so that the middlemen who get cut out, make the market overall more accessible and transparent to the final customers. Therefore, in theory, the supply chain gets more efficient and, all in all can produce products that customers want.
coupling
As startups gain control of new markets. They expand in adjacent areas in disparate and different industries by coupling the new activities to benefits customers. Thus, even though the adjunct activities might see far from the core business model, they are tied to the way customers experience the whole business model.
decoupling
According to the book, Unlocking The Value Chain, Harvard professor Thales Teixeira identified three waves of disruption (unbundling, disintermediation, and decoupling). Decoupling is the third wave (2006-still ongoing) where companies break apart the customer value chain to deliver part of the value, without bearing the costs to sustain the whole value chain.

Read next: Unbundling, Disintermediation, Coupling, Decoupling

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