What is Business Value?
Business value is the net benefit an initiative creates — tangible (revenue, cost savings, market share) and intangible (brand, capability, morale, strategic position). PMI's framing makes it the point of everything: projects exist to create value, and a project delivered on time and budget that creates none has failed at the only level that counts.
Value-thinking changes decisions mid-flight: features, phases, even whole projects get re-examined against the value they still promise, not the effort already spent.
Worked example
Two competing internal projects: a warehouse robot pilot (hard savings: $800K/year) and a customer-portal rebuild (soft value: retention, brand, support deflection — estimated, honestly, as a range). The committee funds both but sequences the portal first: churn is the company's bleeding artery, and value isn't only the number that's easiest to prove.