In today’s highly dynamic business environment, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) adopting Lean need to do more than merely reducing waste in their processes. To achieve sustainable competitiveness, they need to develop an in-depth understanding of what their customers truly value and to broaden their value creation focus from internal processes to their value network. This is one of the conclusions that Erdogan Gülyaz has reached in his dissertation titled “Extending Lean Framework Beyond Conventional Boundaries: Exploring Value Creation and Appropriation in SMEs and Services”, with which he got his doctoral promotion on Thursday July 13th at Nyenrode Business Universiteit.