IESE Insight

How personal values can become a catalyst for innovation

January 1, 2026

Innovation is sometimes limited to market analysis and customer needs. But Magnum Photos shows that values can be just as powerful a driver.

By Anastasia Sergeeva and Christoph Zott

After spending the early 1940s documenting wartime brutalities, photojournalist Robert Capa — renowned for his searing images of the U.S. assault on Omaha Beach on D-Day — refused to return to a system that reduced photographers to mere cogs in the news machine. Magazine contracts at the time offered photojournalists little control over their images, distribution, pricing or credits, and editorial teams altered or cropped their work without their consent.

Capa, along with a group of other photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour, founded Magnum Photos in 1947 to change this established way of working. They formed a cooperative built on the principle of creative works being indivisible from ownership, giving photographers the right to tell their stories and control how those stories reached the public.

Their deeply held values of creative freedom, professional integrity and independence resulted in a new business model considered renegade at the time. What can we learn from this case regarding how founders’ values can give rise to business model innovation (BMI) in new ventures, especially under conditions of uncertainty?

Where creative integrity and business execution operate as one

Innovation requires market and consumer intelligence and insight in order to recognize and seize untapped opportunities. Yet innovation is also conditioned by the convictions of the founders. Entrepreneurial leaders’ deeply held values will shape the structures and choices underpinning the business model, and steer the long-term strategic direction of the business.

A central mechanism we identify from the Magnum case is perceived non-divisibility of certain activities that arises from viewing certain principles as non-negotiable — in other words, allowing separate parties to perform these activities would put these principles at risk. For Magnum’s founders, their non-negotiables were professional integrity, independence and creative freedom.

Such a mindset influences how the work is organized, how decisions are made, and how innovation unfolds. Without it, tasks can become transactional, and meaningful opportunities for innovation (assembling a novel combination of activities into a novel business model) can be missed.

Magnum’s cooperative structure was not a coincidence but a manifestation of the founders’ distinct value logic. The creation of a photographer-owned model was not something that the market was looking for or that consumers were demanding. They essentially broke the status quo. Magnum members retained copyright, editorial authority and control over distribution of their work, ensuring creative autonomy; and licensing, sales and exhibitions enabled financial sustainability. This business model subsequently empowered generations of creative artists to maintain control over their work — suggesting there are alternative paths to financial sustainability via the values one holds dear and not just via traditional economic rationality (i.e., a pure cost-benefit analysis).

Echoes of Magnum’s values-driven ethos across industries

We see echoes of Magnum’s creator-driven control in what Taylor Swift or Silicon Valley innovators are doing today.

After being denied ownership of her early masters, Taylor Swift re-recorded her albums to create new masters that she fully owns, redirecting revenue to herself, devaluing the originals and turning a contractual loophole into a fan-powered movement. This shift not only expanded her commercial ecosystem but also rebalanced the power dynamic between artists and labels, making her approach a landmark model of creator ownership and industry disruption.

Similarly, platforms such as Kickstarter and Patreon bypass traditional gatekeepers by enabling direct fan-to-creator funding. These models allow artists and inventors to maintain ownership while activating audiences as stakeholders in their success. They have enabled a wave of independent creative work that once required institutional approval and capital.

In tech, Silicon Valley innovators reshaped venture funding around access, transparency and support. The startup accelerator Y Combinator helped democratize seed capital and mentorship, while AngelList opened early-stage investing through online syndicates. Together, these changes made the process easier, gave founders more say and swapped out hidden gatekeepers for more open, community-guided systems.

In all these cases, the pattern is the same: when established systems conflict with creators’ or founders’ values, they build new structures that realign incentives, ownership and community, unlocking powerful forms of business model innovation.

Key patterns across values-driven success stories

The following are some general principles that we can take from the Magnum case and similar examples as we think about innovating in uncertain business environments.

Agency and ownership. Founders/creators refuse to accept the limitations of the existing business model paradigm. They challenge the established thinking around ownership, equity, decision-making power and control.
Disruption through structure, not just product. Innovation can come not just from inventing and launching a new product, but also from how activities are organized in a system. Restructuring ownership and distribution is another avenue to opening revenue streams.
Community as amplifier. Fans, networks of investors or members of a cooperative all become participatory stakeholders, actively driving economic win-wins as well as amplifying reach and social impact. This enhances the total value that is created by the business model.
Value alignment as competitive advantage. The previously discussed business models succeeded because they reflected the values of the creators, not just market efficiency. That, in turn, helps to attract the best talent. Magnum’s insistence on artistic integrity mirrors how other companies, like Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s, embed ethical values or sustainability into their business models, transforming those values into sources of competitive advantage. Aligning business practices with personal or organizational values creates differentiation that market efficiency or product innovation alone cannot provide.
Industry ripple effects. All these actions may inspire imitators, who further challenge traditional gatekeepers or force incumbents to reconsider industry norms. But by being a first mover and setting a precedent for others to follow, you may succeed in reshaping an industry in your favor the way that Magnum did.

MORE INFO: “How founders’ values enable business model innovation in new ventures: the case of Magnum Photos” by Anastasia Sergeeva and Christoph Zott. Strategic Management Journal (2025).

This article is included in IESE Business School Insight online magazine No. 171 (Jan.-April 2026).