The difference is meaning
I've been thinking about the "meaning economy" for a while, given the possibility that cheap access to AI knowledge fundamentally changes what is valuable in our economy. The idea that meaning could be the next frontier is intriguing to me, but it always felt superficial in the same way that having your work "make a difference" feels noble yet notoriously difficult to achieve. When thinking about the meaning economy, I wasn't creative enough to come up with anything substantial past yoga studios, avant-garde restaurants, nature escapes. The article below helps me see past the obvious solutions to something more fundamental about building things that humans buy or consume.
This post by Davide Ritorto talks about the disappearance of traditional "moats" now that AI makes traditional differentiators quickly and easily surmountable.
When speed and specialisms are no longer differentiators, "the next competitive layer is interpretation—how people make sense of what you do and why you exist."
This post has so many impactful quotes for me that I want to remember - I am just going to list them all below without much context.
meaning is not a fixed asset. It evolves with context, culture, and behavior. Maintaining it requires consistency, clarity, and the ability to adapt.
Roberto Verganti describes the Innovation of Meaning:
Rather than solving existing problems more efficiently, it reframes what problems are relevant in the first place. [...] it’s about reframing the problem itself, and proposing new interpretations of what a product or service represents in people’s lives
The definition of meaning is "what people feel, expect, and believe when they interact with a product or brand." For a product that means shifting the focus "from usability to symbolism"
Advice for startups:
Don't act as "feature hunters — chasing the next pilotable tech or a plug-and-play solution to a known problem"
Startups shouldn’t just add features. They should help interpret what’s next meaning for you.
The successful ones will excel "not by sourcing better tools, but by interpreting emerging signals earlier and more clearly than others"