The layers of true value creation

Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a 10-part series on design lessons learned from Reclaiming Value, Murmur Ring’s four-day multi-disciplinary immersion in Peru’s Sacred Valley. In this essay, Masha Safina, a design and innovation leader with Accenture Song, explains how the experience helped her more deeply understand how “our modern perception of value is shaped by scarcity, competition, and accumulation, and how alternative systems based on abundance and relational exchange can offer a more balanced, sustainable future.” Read more of the series here. 

In modern culture, value is often measured by ownership. The more we own, the more we are worth. This mindset drives competition, private ownership, and the constant pursuit of more. But in the Sacred Valley, we encountered a different truth: “I am rich because I have something to give.” Here, value flows through relationships rather than transactions. It is shared, alive, and nurtured through care.

These lessons were not abstract. They were lived and embodied through communal meals, shared work, storytelling, and stillness. We were challenged to slow down and recognize that value does not emerge through speed or scale, but through reciprocity, care, and patience. The experience stood in contrast with traditional academic training and practical applications that inform much of the design practice today, prompting the cohort to redefine and provoke how we can facilitate “true” value.

One of the most immediate and humbling insights was that real value creation takes time. In a world driven by instant results, we are taught to prioritize quick wins and measurable outcomes. The Sacred Valley reminded us to think in terms of generations, not quarters, and to design with longevity and reciprocity in mind.

While we may not have the power to completely overturn systems that have evolved over centuries, we can begin to identify and implement abundance-oriented behaviors in our lives and in how we engage with both emotional and material value.

Value exchange as the basis of a healthy ecosystem

Value cannot be understood in isolation. It only becomes meaningful through exchange — the dynamic flow of giving and receiving that ties individuals to their communities, systems to their stakeholders, and people to the planet. During the Sacred Valley immersion, we explored not only how value is created but how it moves through both visible and invisible systems.

A key framework that shaped our understanding of this was the Value Web, a diagnostic, communication, and design tool that helps users identify how value is exchanged within a system, where blockages or inefficiencies exist, and how the flow can be rebalanced for better outcomes. I was first introduced to this framework by Patrick Whitney in 2013, during his “Designing for the Base of the Pyramid” workshop at the Institute of Design. There, we used value webs in our work with the United Way of Southeastern Michigan to map the exchange of value in community-based learning centers. By identifying underused resources or misaligned flows of value, we proposed design interventions to strengthen community relationships, increase parent engagement, and improve learning outcomes. 

Such a framework reinforces what we experienced in the Sacred Valley: value exchange happens on both material and emotional levels. For any sustainable ecosystem to thrive, it must support the balanced circulation of goods, services, information, and also care, trust, empathy, and human connection. The systems we design must account not only for transactions but for the relationships that sustain them.

In her book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Robin Wall Kimmerer offers a powerful articulation of this principle. She suggests that in a gift economy, value is not defined by scarcity or possession, but by the reciprocal act of giving. Gifts carry meaning beyond price; they carry obligation, gratitude, and connection. When we participate in this kind of exchange, we become part of a relational web, much like the ecological systems in which the Serviceberry tree, the central metaphor for her thesis, exists: every part supports the whole through mutual giving.

Community as a unit of value creation

If value only becomes real through exchange, then the quality and balance of that exchange determine the health of the ecosystem. During our time in the Sacred Valley, we witnessed how value exchange takes many forms: material (goods, services, time), emotional (support, care, presence), and relational (trust, collaboration, reciprocity).

In many modern market-based systems, exchange is largely transactional: a product or service is exchanged for money, and the interaction ends there. But this model neglects other vital layers of value, especially those that sustain communities and ecosystems over time.

At MIL Centro, a research-based restaurant and agricultural initiative situated in the highlands above the Sacred Valley, we witnessed firsthand how value creation is intricately woven into the land, the community, and the culinary experience itself. MIL doesn’t just serve meals; it restores ecosystems, preserves Indigenous farming practices, and supports local growers. Its value creation is multi-layered: economically supporting local producers, emotionally connecting diners to the land, and relationally reinforcing community ties.

This ties directly to the insight that value is created on a community level. As much as we need a macro, strategic vision to guide systemic change, the actual creation of value occurs through local, contextual, and micro-level exchanges. Whether it’s a farmer collaborating with a chef, or a neighbor sharing tools with another, it’s these small, intentional acts that build the trust and infrastructure needed for larger transformations to take root. Responding to community needs — rather than imposing top-down models — is a critical component of sustainable value creation.

Kimmerer’s Serviceberry metaphor echoes this exactly. The tree does not hoard its fruit; it gives freely, nourishing birds, animals, and people alike. In return, it is pollinated, its seeds dispersed, its lineage continued. In this system, the act of giving ensures survival, not just of the individual, but of the ecosystem. Like the Serviceberry, these Andean communities understand that mutual aid and reciprocity are not acts of charity, but core economic behaviors that sustain the whole.

Material and emotional layers of value creation

One of the most striking realizations from our time in Peru was how, in balanced, sustainable ecosystems, material and emotional value coexist, often in the same act of exchange. In industrial societies, the market economy fosters a narrow view: value is considered to end when payment is made. The exchange is clean, quantified, and complete. But in these Indigenous cultures, value continues beyond the transaction, manifesting in relationships, responsibilities, and social cohesion.

This became clear through the lens of Ayni, the Andean concept of reciprocity. Ayni teaches that every act of giving creates a bond, an invisible thread that binds giver and receiver in a relationship that unfolds over time. If someone helps harvest your crops today, you will help build their house tomorrow. This system doesn’t rely on ledgers or contracts, but on trust, memory, and community expectation.

The material exchange — the shared labor — is only one layer. Equally important is the emotional value: the care, gratitude, and sense of belonging that result. In such systems, communities are not just surviving together; they are constantly weaving a shared fabric of value, layer upon layer.

In a 2022 essay, Kimmerer points out that, in gift economies, “the currency is relationship.” A gift given strengthens the tie between people and invites future exchange — not in a linear or transactional way, but in a circular, regenerative flow. This mirrors the Sacred Valley’s model of value: material gifts feed the body, emotional gifts feed the spirit, and both nourish the community.

This model reinforces ties of support, gratitude, and long-term connection. As we saw in the Sacred Valley, true value creation is relational, built slowly and intentionally through shared purpose and mutual care.

The value of “value,” reframed

The Sacred Valley Design Immersion did not give us easy answers. It did, however, offer clarity, contrast, and context. In four short days, surrounded by the ancestral wisdom of the Andes, we peeled back the layers of value: from economic to emotional, from transactional to relational, from scarce to abundant.

We came to see that value is not just what we have; it’s what we share. It lives in relationships, in reciprocity, in the invisible ties that bind people to one another and the land. The ecosystems we move through — economic, emotional, ecological — can only thrive when value flows freely, equitably, and with care.

We learned that value creation takes time, that it happens in community, and that its most essential layers are often the most intangible: trust, support, patience, and love. We may not be able to fully dismantle the scarcity-based systems that dominate today’s world. We can, however, begin to recode our behaviors, choices, and designs.

We can design for abundance, for balance, for reciprocity. We can honor both material and emotional value. We can build systems where relationships — not resources — are the true currency.

In reclaiming value, we reclaim our capacity to connect, to care, and to co-create futures rooted not in fear of scarcity, but in faith in what we can build together.