Book excerpt: A supply chain is the process of all parties involved in fulfilling a customer request, while a value chain is a set of interrelated activities a company uses to create value and a competitive advantage. In Strategic Value Chain Management the authors bring together a variety of disciplines, showing how to move from traditional supply chain management to value chain management. Research from the (ISM) International School of Management, Germany, originating from a network of companies in a range of sectors, is integrated with case studies to demonstrate particular concepts. Strategic Value Chain Management brings together theory and practice and presents tangible ways of creating competitiveness in a changing world through the use of effective models and frameworks. Challenging the traditional Porters Five Forces Model, the authors introduce the important academic disciplines of cybernetics and systems sciences as essential drivers of strategy within the supply chain, supported by case studies illustrating their implementation.