By Gerry Katz

We’ve all heard of that little game people play in meetings called Business B*** S***, in which the players bet on how many times the boss will use various business clichés such as empowerment, core competency, opening the kimono, taking it offline and giving 110%. Even worse are the terms that everyone uses, but that lack much precision in their definition—words like leverage, synergistic, scalability, robust, etc. Well…terms like innovation, utility, and value have now entered this growing pantheon of business clichés! What exactly do we mean by value and how do we know it’s been created?