The economic models that surround creative output - be that design, product or concept (that is to say ‘ideas’) - rely on the unspoken ideology that unique, inventive or progressive output carries an inherited worth or value. This value is then exchangeable for money, cache, attention - or ideally all three.

Currency, cache and attention are leverage-able assets. Currency converts in traditional ways and is a short-term asset. Cache and attention alone longer term assets which inherently offer possible future conversions into currency, much like a bond. Like a bond, cache and attention are derived from a debt or investment. In creative output that debt or investment is time.

This approach works well for stabilized economic models. The studio model. The SaaS model. The D2C product model. The lone artist. The freelancer. Creative output is generated over time, which is an investment. Some of that time converts to currency that supports a lifestyle, company or product line. The rest of that time converts to cache or attention, which is then leveraged to inflate potential currency conversion.

For example - as a designer, if you work on a specific high profile product you will likely earn an income. But your income is only one result of your output. If your output was high profile you also earn cache and attention. You leverage those to increase your income or attract future higher incomes and influence. You equally may not earn an income at all, but instead only earn cache and attention - this is a more fraught gamble for the creative because it places more emphasis on future currency conversion which carries more risk.

This is how it works. What this also means is that your output - or Intellectual Property (IP) - has a value. You may sell that IP to your employer or client for currency, but some aspects of that IP - residual aspects sometimes - are not for short term conversion. Cache and attention still exist to provide the possibility of future conversion.

When you sell your IP to someone, they take this IP and do the same thing. That IP has short term conversion - it sells something, it improves an efficiency, it solves a problem - but they too gain cache and attention which they will try to leverage for future conversion.

This is why IP is a defensible outcome of creative output. It can have massive monetary value both short term and long term. Because it has a market value, it can be leveraged in an economic model.

Spongebob. The Marvel Universe. The Rolling Stones. Vogue.