I enjoyed this read. One paragraph stuck out to me: What do people think the author means by “capturing value” here? What’s the distinction between creating and capturing?
I enjoyed this read. One paragraph stuck out to me:
The formation of a business community and investment of capital catalyzes adoption, but often the early work is done for the sake of curiosity and aspiration for a better world. The creation of value and the capture of value are not the same thing. Finding better ways to reward and sustain those who are good at creating value but not capturing it would improve society.
What do people think the author means by “capturing value” here? What’s the distinction between creating and capturing?
"Capturing value" is basically just monetizing. Lots of internet/tech work creates value by building sites and services that people want to use (so they have value to those people), but unless...
"Capturing value" is basically just monetizing. Lots of internet/tech work creates value by building sites and services that people want to use (so they have value to those people), but unless that value is captured somehow in the form of income, it's not sustainable.
The internet especially is in a pretty ugly cycle where venture capital allows companies to create a lot of value without needing to worry about capturing at all. Then when they inevitably have to find a way to capture the value from all their users, they end up turning their product into something that nobody would have used in the first place, because the monetization methods make it so much worse. Users end up migrating to a competitor that's still in their pre-capturing phase, and it repeats.
A good example is image-hosting sites. They always start out being simple and free: just upload an image and share direct links wherever you want. That creates a lot of value for people, but there's no way of capturing it. When they start trying to monetize through methods like converting those direct links into ad-laden pages, it drives the users away.
You quoted the most important part of the whole piece. Others have already weighed in, but I wanted to put this in my own words: Creating value is the act of doing work that is good/helpful/utile....
You quoted the most important part of the whole piece.
Others have already weighed in, but I wanted to put this in my own words:
Creating value is the act of doing work that is good/helpful/utile.
I enjoyed this read. One paragraph stuck out to me:
What do people think the author means by “capturing value” here? What’s the distinction between creating and capturing?
"Capturing value" is basically just monetizing. Lots of internet/tech work creates value by building sites and services that people want to use (so they have value to those people), but unless that value is captured somehow in the form of income, it's not sustainable.
The internet especially is in a pretty ugly cycle where venture capital allows companies to create a lot of value without needing to worry about capturing at all. Then when they inevitably have to find a way to capture the value from all their users, they end up turning their product into something that nobody would have used in the first place, because the monetization methods make it so much worse. Users end up migrating to a competitor that's still in their pre-capturing phase, and it repeats.
A good example is image-hosting sites. They always start out being simple and free: just upload an image and share direct links wherever you want. That creates a lot of value for people, but there's no way of capturing it. When they start trying to monetize through methods like converting those direct links into ad-laden pages, it drives the users away.
You quoted the most important part of the whole piece.
Others have already weighed in, but I wanted to put this in my own words:
Creating value is the act of doing work that is good/helpful/utile.
Capturing value is rent-seeking.
Create Value - make something people enjoy using
Capture Value - monetize said something.