Nature of Competition: Brain Power Rental
In the beginning there was Value. We in economics are interested in value particularly associated with utilities, or “happiness” in the utilitarian language. Then, the opening question in discourse of economic value might well be, “What kinds of value are there in the beginning?” A fairly plausible answer will be, there are two kinds, i.e. raw ideas and raw materials . The former are of us, the humans, while the latter owing to Mother Nature. In old times, raw ideas were created and processed into knowledge at each household. More publicly in modern times, the firm rents brain powers for research in search of raw ideas. When potentially useful, a set of raw ideas is patented and subsequently becomes a tradable asset , usually intermediate yet possibly final. Again, the step-wise value-addition takes place gener...