Illuminating, Rila Monastery, Bulgaria

Returning to my comment on A Freemium Life, a bit that has been running through my thoughts a lot lately…

1) The great potential in giving away our knowledge, value and time is to create connections and opportunities that we had not considered, or targeted, or comprehended. Connections and networks have always been and will always be the most valuable way of finding people to answer questions and solve problems (i.e. create value), but what is changing is how the connections and networks work.

We’re still learning the ropes we’ve created for ourselves; cultural changes lag technological changes.

The greatest opportunities (and future payoffs) are for those who recognize where our culture is going in regards to how we find, value and exchange value.

2) Value is determined by the receiver, not the sender; by the buyer, not the seller.

Leading to: value is created through execution, not ideas; by what someone does with the knowledge and ideas, not by the idea or the knowledge itself.

Resulting in: “premium” and “free” are determined by buyers, not sellers.

3) The real difficulty in my mind is how do we justify opaque knowledge? How does the opaqueness of knowledge transfer hinder the transfer from even occurring?

The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle at work.

There’s an inherent information asymmetry that is difficult to overcome. That’s why we have degrees, certifications, job titles, resumes; but they don’t eliminate the information asymmetry, they only help justify it.

Instead of justifying the opaqueness, I’m interested in finding ways to eliminate it.