How to Create Distributed Value
Value creation shifts from solely within the firm to small, decentralized contributions from people, organizations, and machines
Distributed technologies do new things that benefit from some explanation. Distributed tech can track resources, transformations, and agent contributions at a granular level across networks. When we build products like jewelry or cars, as a series of small transformations we need a common, end-to-end language, like JSON-LD. Interoperable language allows data to describe itself and its connections without centralized platforms. In other words, as distributed tranformations and commerce.
Value creation shifts from being solely within the firm—driven by employees, products, or controlled supply chains—to distributed ecosystems that recognize and value individual contributions from people, organizations, machines, and autonomous software agents. This approach enables precise measurement, pricing, and transactions of these contributions, while providing granular insight into climate and economic ecosystems through detailed tracking of materials, data, energy, intellectual property, transformations, transactions, and process events.
Distributed business models structure, price, and amplify contributions, transformations, and relationships by embedding visibility and accountability into the system itself—a pure form of market effects. Interoperability and coordination support trust at scale, foster innovation, and amplify value creation. Decentralized network effects and distributed contributions thrive when independent actors increase overall capability, credibility, or composability.
Understandably, these innovations also decentralize network effects and other tech success measures. They reshape business strategy by shifting where value is created, how trust is built, and which strategies can scale. This architecture aligns economic activity with climate accountability, shifts power to those creating real value, builds resilience, and enables coordination at scale.