Impact
What Decision Makers Say About the VCW’s Impact
Below you will find statements from key decision makers across diverse sectors, sharing how the VCW has shaped their organizations and how they view its contribution to strategic decision‑making.
Over the past decades, executives have consistently highlighted the relevance and impact of the VCW in several critical dimensions:
Decision Quality
Demonstrated improvements in the robustness and clarity of decisions
Solutions selected through the VCW become more actionable, better justified, and easier to communicate
Time Efficiency
Acceleration of the decision‑making process compared with traditional approaches
Significant reduction in unnecessary iterations, rework, and delays
Resource Efficiency
Achievement of high‑quality outcomes with fewer resources—time, people, and budget
More focused, meaningful, and effective involvement of stakeholders
Stakeholder Alignment
Stronger alignment across diverse stakeholders, even in complex or high‑pressure contexts
Clearer identification, reduction, and resolution of conflicts
Challenge Complexity
Ability to structure, simplify, and make sense of complex challenges that previously felt overwhelming or ambiguous
Implementation Impact
Smoother implementation of selected solutions
Visible, measurable results and long‑term organizational impact
“Knowing our ability to innovate, we needed to industrialize innovation. Professor Luis Lages (…) helped us with his VCW methodology to manage this process internally and industrialize innovation.”
Gonçalo Caseiro
Former President of the Board of INCM-Casa da Moeda
“VCW is an enabler of decisions which are more considered (allows a broader range of alternatives), more focused and supported (allows the incorporation of filters), and more structured (allows to follow a process). So, it makes decision-making more efficient and effective.”
Paula Hortinha
Paula Hortinha, ex-CEO of JMD-Jerónimo Martins Distribuição
“We have the basic know-how and the tools to gain more awareness online. What we lack is an investment decision and a methodology to sustain it. Now it is available. (…) (The VCW is) a solid method to take fundamental decisions, namely resource investment decisions.”
José Pinheiro
Former Director of International Business Development of Renova
“…”
Nuno Catarino
Former Head of Division of Elecnor Deimos
“We have the basic know-how and the tools to gain more awareness online. What we lack is an investment decision and a methodology to sustain it. Now it is available. (…) (The VCW is) a solid method to take fundamental decisions, namely resource investment decisions.”
José Pinheiro
Former Director of International Business Development of Renova
“Nowadays, organizations have lots of good ideas or initiatives, but they don’t have the resources to pursue all of them. Having a clear, transparent, and collaborative process for choosing the right actions is crucial for the success of the innovation initiatives.
When looking for solutions to address this problem, I came across the VCW framework, that incorporates an excellent decision-making process, which allows an informed decision by the decision-maker with transparent and clear reasoning for the decision.”
Paulo Malta
Former Senior Advisor to the Minister of the Presidency and Administrative Modernization in the Portuguese Government;
Managing Partner Innovsky
“We have the basic know-how and the tools to gain more awareness online. What we lack is an investment decision and a methodology to sustain it. Now it is available. (…) (The VCW is) a solid method to take fundamental decisions, namely resource investment decisions.”
José Pinheiro
Former Director of International Business Development of Renova
“The VCW clearly helped design a battle plan for marketing in 2019. Easy to follow with a structured approach. Excellent roadmap. (…) The VCW assisted with social media and event presence (short-term impact) and community engagement and website enhancement (medium-term impact). (We will continue using it) as a roadmap for business strategy, determining KPIs to follow implementation (and) externally to communicate the needs and ensure everybody has a focus target. It allows us to sit down and spend time thinking besides constant action.”
Christophe Cordonnie
CoFounder and CEO of Lagoped
What Decision Makers Say About VCW’s Relevance for Higher Education
“The VCW clearly helped design a battle plan for marketing in 2019. Easy to follow with a structured approach. Excellent roadmap. (…) The VCW assisted with social media and event presence (short-term impact) and community engagement and website enhancement (medium-term impact). (We will continue using it) as a roadmap for business strategy, determining KPIs to follow implementation (and) externally to communicate the needs and ensure everybody has a focus target. It allows us to sit down and spend time thinking besides constant action.”
Christophe Cordonnie
CoFounder and CEO of Lagoped
“The VCW clearly helped design a battle plan for marketing in 2019. Easy to follow with a structured approach. Excellent roadmap. (…) The VCW assisted with social media and event presence (short-term impact) and community engagement and website enhancement (medium-term impact). (We will continue using it) as a roadmap for business strategy, determining KPIs to follow implementation (and) externally to communicate the needs and ensure everybody has a focus target. It allows us to sit down and spend time thinking besides constant action.”
Christophe Cordonnie
CoFounder and CEO of Lagoped
“The VCW clearly helped design a battle plan for marketing in 2019. Easy to follow with a structured approach. Excellent roadmap. (…) The VCW assisted with social media and event presence (short-term impact) and community engagement and website enhancement (medium-term impact). (We will continue using it) as a roadmap for business strategy, determining KPIs to follow implementation (and) externally to communicate the needs and ensure everybody has a focus target. It allows us to sit down and spend time thinking besides constant action.”
Christophe Cordonnie
CoFounder of Lagoped
“With the VCW we got fresh and out-of-the-box ideas. We can also replicate this process to other products and services.”
Alexandra Santos
Founder of Livros Pangaea
Aurélio Duarte
Chief Information Officer at Insparya Portugal
“The VCW increases communication with stakeholders, facilitates dialogue, facilitates students’ understanding of business difficulties, facilitates planning. Motivates (…to continue our journey).”
“I started as a skeptic in relation to this methodology and I confess, that in the first stage, I didn’t expect the results we obtained. At the end of the process, we found very practical solutions, and we achieved the objectives that we had set. Indeed, it was a very pleasant surprise to me.”
Paulo Pires
CEO of WhyMob
“Last year, we used this methodology to find solutions to improve the school meal. (…) This is an excellent framework to put the entire school community thinking together about the best solutions to improve the food served at school. This framework was very useful, but it was also good to make the children aware that their opinions matter and they can help solving problems that affect them too.”
Maria Elsa Lopes
Teacher at Sagrado Coração de Maria
“VCW is an innovation methodology, and aids in finding the solutions for any kind of problems (…) It can be applied in every conceivable area, at internal or client level.”
Fernando Amaro
Executive Board Member at Montepio
“Our organization uses the VCW methodology to define every area of its existence, which is much more than a specific project. (…) We use the VCW to understand how we can create more value for our financier. (…) Moreover, we used the VCW to define not only the entire operative model throughout the year (…) but also our mission, and the entire association service model to be catered for the Portuguese society.”
Pedro Queiró
CEO of Acredita Portugal and CoFounder of DreamShaper
“The VCW clearly helped design a battle plan for marketing in 2019. Easy to follow with a structured approach. Excellent roadmap. (…) The VCW assisted with social media and event presence (short-term impact) and community engagement and website enhancement (medium-term impact). (We will continue using it) as a roadmap for business strategy, determining KPIs to follow implementation (and) externally to communicate the needs and ensure everybody has a focus target. It allows us to sit down and spend time thinking besides constant action.”
Christophe Cordonnie
CoFounder of Lagoped
“With the VCW we got fresh and out-of-the-box ideas. We can also replicate this process to other products and services.”
Alexandra Santos
Founder of Livros Pangaea
Aurélio Duarte
Chief Information Officer at Insparya Portugal
“The VCW increases communication with stakeholders, facilitates dialogue, facilitates students’ understanding of business difficulties, facilitates planning. Motivates (…to continue our journey).”
“I started as a skeptic in relation to this methodology and I confess, that in the first stage, I didn’t expect the results we obtained. At the end of the process, we found very practical solutions, and we achieved the objectives that we had set. Indeed, it was a very pleasant surprise to me.”
Paulo Pires
CEO of WhyMob
“Last year, we used this methodology to find solutions to improve the school meal. (…) This is an excellent framework to put the entire school community thinking together about the best solutions to improve the food served at school. This framework was very useful, but it was also good to make the children aware that their opinions matter and they can help solving problems that affect them too.”
Maria Elsa Lopes
Teacher at Sagrado Coração de Maria
“VCW is an innovation methodology, and aids in finding the solutions for any kind of problems (…) It can be applied in every conceivable area, at internal or client level.”
Fernando Amaro
Executive Board Member at Montepio
“Our organization uses the VCW methodology to define every area of its existence, which is much more than a specific project. (…) We use the VCW to understand how we can create more value for our financier. (…) Moreover, we used the VCW to define not only the entire operative model throughout the year (…) but also our mission, and the entire association service model to be catered for the Portuguese society.”
Pedro Queiró
CEO of Acredita Portugal and CoFounder of DreamShaper
“It is with great pleasure that I see in a university the emergence of this model of problem-solving Value Creation Wheel, initially created to meet the needs of the business sector but whose application can be extended to the social sector. (…) I never get tired of highlighting these good examples because we increasingly need knowledge to support the decision and the social policy initiatives. Congratulations to Professor Luís Filipe Lages and his team for this work and good wishes for the future..
Maria Manuel Leitão Marques
Former Minister of the Presidency and of Administrative Modernisation,
Member of the European Parliament
“I consider very interesting the existence of tools to support managers in decision-making to create the maximum possible value, as is the case of Value Creation Wheel created by Professor Luis Filipe Lages and his team. The VCW helps to think innovation and value capturing in companies and organizations in sectors as diverse as aerospace, biology, energy, etc.”
Ana Teresa Lehmann
Former Secretary of State of Industry of Portugal
“Many thanks to Luis Lages and to Nova School of Business and Economics for the opportunity to present Sport Lisboa e Benfica and some of our challenges to the Master students of Innovation and Value Creation Wheel course! Great concept this VCW methodology! Always a pleasure to return to the School where I took my MBA! I wish you all the best! And I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity to develop great projects together!”
Vice President of Innovation & Technology at Sport Lisboa e Benfica
Rui Passo
“Fund-Raising is a huge challenge for non-profits. The VCW methodology makes us prioritize our scope and from there help to be specific about what to focus on to reach our dream one campaign at a time. Both main ideas will be pursued in the short-term. The idea regarding organizing an ocean expedition as a fund-raising vessel is pertinent through the long-run… as is the partnership with Cabo d’Mar.”
João Macedo
Founding Partner Surf Academia Joao Macedo, and President of Hope Zones Foundation
In this video different leaders explain the VCW4Social impact on their own organizations.