Aggregation and knowledge value creation?
Aggregation theory is the idea that value is being re-organized due to the zero-marginal costs of digital distribution and the information abundance of the digital age creating a new hard problem of knowledge discovery being the source of value.
Platforms need to behave with antifragility, designing for most people to fail but a few to succeed big, with hockey stick value curves. Commoditization of blogs at near zero-marginal cost as contractors who eat what they kill, it will be up to the individual to create enough value to be worth it for a niche to find their ideas.
These incentives cause a "don't chase the soccer ball" phenomenon where the value is in seeing things differently. The un-tethered blogger will be incentivized to be extreme in a different perspective, otherwise they become lost in the bigger system that is optimized to deliver the "normal" information about a topic.
why does Aggregation Theory matter?
Pre-internet, the value was integrating systems of manufacturing in order to best serve groups of customers with the best products. Post-internet, the suppliers are commoditizated and value is created by connecting individual customers to the nichge value. Pre-internet, manufacturers compete on integration for quality, aggregators compete on network effects, solving the hard problems of discovery, and serving customers through platform benefits.
Example: Textbooks
Pre-Internet: A textbook competes on integrating ideas to improve access to sets of knowledge.
Aggregators compete on information sources commoditization creating sovereign writers, which they don't even pay for. They solve the hard problem of discovery in a world of information abundance. |
What would the opposite argument be?
If there are no really new ideas, just new contexts, then how do we create value?
Sources:
Taleb, N. N. (2014). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. Random House.
https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/
https://stratechery.com/2021/sovereign-writers-and-substack/
https://stratechery.com/2021/stripes-role-competition-and-differentiation-the-local-news-opportunity/s