Scholars and business people have long sought the source of value, and have come up with various models and theories about value creation. These perspectives can help us think about the components of value, but they all come up lacking when applied to coffee. In this talk, Prof. Fischer looks at how the specialty coffee market confounds theories of value. In the end, valuation is not a science and cannot be understood based on any single formula or equation: creating value is, rather, an art, creatively combining different sources of worth into unique configurations.

Presenter:

Ted Fischer is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, where he also directs the Institute for Coffee Studies. His research examines how cultural values shape the global economy and health and wellbeing. He is the author of several books, including most recently, Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Tastemakers Create Value