Like most concepts, this is very simple at its core, but profound in its applications and implications. Simply put, “value creation is measured by the distance traveled towards perfection away from a problem”. And utility is the tool used to create value, consider it “potential value creation”. “A true utopia is only a mirage. It’s the well journeyed, but eternal destination of innovation.”
This should not be discouraging at all however, since that simply indicates that the ability to create and capture value will never cease, making success a constant principle. This post is a great example of utility. I’ve created some utility, but utility doesn’t equal value creation. If I wrote a book on the steps to wealth, and everyone who read and applied the book became wealthy, that’s an extremely high Utility book. But since people have to read and apply it to solve their problem and create value, it’s only Utility.
How many copies you sell sadly is a very poor metric of how valuable a book is, since most of the people who purchase a book never read it, let alone apply it and receive the benefit from it. So people who sell a million plus copies of a book are creating a lot of potential value, but it doesn’t mean they solved a million people’s problems, and it would be misleading to say so.
However, the more utility you create, the higher the ceiling or limit on your value creation, since your value creation will always be less than you utility creation. Utility caps your Value Creation, and Value Creation caps your Value Capture.
Utility creation doesn’t require high amounts of work necessarily, but does require creation regardless of difficulty or cost. Often times our Utility is simply our raw Resources such as knowledge, or with some structure. This blog is a good example of Utility in the form of somewhat structured knowledge, that I can use to create value, but doesn’t create value unless someone reads and applies it. The implications are that the more Utility you create, the more value you can create, and the more value you create, the more value you can capture. So the more you want to be paid, create more potential value through Utility.