He formed the concept of the value chain, essentially the sequence of steps with which a, shall we say, raw material, becomes a component, becomes assembled into a finished product, and then is distributed, for example, and he argued that advantage accrued to each of those components, and that the advantage of the whole was in some sense the sum or the average of that of its parts.
Stvorio je koncept lanca vrijednosti, u osnovi slijed stepenica kojim, možemo reći, sirov materijal postaje komponenta, spaja se u završni proizvod, i distribuirana se. Raspravljao je da se ta prednost  obračunava prema svim komponentama, i da je cijela prednost na neki način zbroj ili prosjek vlastitih dijelova.