Twelve Standard Forms of Value

Capital is the purchase of an ownership stake in a business. For parties that have resources to allocate, providing Capital is a way to help owners of new or existing businesses expand or enter new markets.

In order to provide value via Capital, you must:

• Have a ...

Agency involves the marketing and sale of an asset you don’t own. Instead of producing value by yourself, you team up with someone else who has value to offer, then work to find a purchaser. In exchange for establishing a new relationship between your source and a buyer, you earn...

Resale is the acquisition of an asset from a wholesale seller, followed by the sale of that asset to a retail buyer at a higher price.

In order to provide value as a reseller, you must:

• Purchase a product as inexpensively as possible.
• Keep the product in ...

Audience Aggregation revolves around collecting the attention of a group of people with similar characteristics, then selling access to that audience to a third party.

In order to provide value via Audience Aggregation, you must:

1. Identify a group of people with c...

A Subscription program provides predefined benefits on an ongoing basis in exchange for a recurring fee. The actual benefits provided can be tangible or intangible—the key differences are (a) the expectation of additional value to be provided in the future and (b) th...

A Lease involves acquiring an asset, followed by allowing another person to use that asset for a predefined amount of time in exchange for a fee. The asset can be pretty much anything: cars, boats, houses, DVDs. As long as an asset is durable enough to survive rental to another p...

A Loan involves an agreement to let the borrower use a certain amount of resources for a certain period of time. In exchange, the borrower must pay the lender a series of payments over a predefined period of time, which is equal to the original loan plus a predefined interest rat...

Insurance involves the transfer of risk from the purchaser to the seller. In exchange for taking on the risk of some specific bad thing happening to the policyholder, the policy holder agrees to give the insurer a predefined series of payments. If the bad thing actually happens, ...

A Service involves helping or assisting someone in exchange for a fee. To create value via Services, you must be able to provide some type of benefit to the user.

In order to create a successful Service, your business must:

1. Have employees capable of skill or abil...

A Shared Resource is a durable asset that can be used by many people. Shared Resources allow you to create the asset once, then charge your customers for its use.

In order to create a successful Shared Resource, you must:

1. Create an asset people want to have acces...

An Option is the ability to take a predefined action for a fixed period of time in exchange for a fee. Options are all around us: movie or concert tickets, coupons, retainers, and licensing rights. In exchange for a fee, the purchaser has the right to take some specific action—at...