Episode #74. Volitional Science: Freedom, Markets, Value, and Entrepreneurship with John Deming & Mike Hamel

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What does it mean to build a civilization that advances forever—and what role do entrepreneurs play in that project? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings interviews John Deming (author) and Mike Hamel (editor) about their book Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition. Deming and Hamel frame markets, innovation and entrepreneurship through the lens of volitional science: a scientific approach to subjective value and long-term progress.

Key insights include:

  • Markets are non-coercive discovery engines that reveal value through voluntary exchange.
  • Volitional science reframes entrepreneurship as an experimental, long-horizon activity that discovers meaning and utility.
  • Institutional design matters: intellectual property, revenue-share structures, and time-horizons shape whether innovation translates into civilization-scale progress.

This episode mixes economic theory, civilizational vision, and practical proposals—from licensing regimes to new corporate structures—aimed at accelerating durable progress.

Resources:

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Purchase the book “Blueprint for a Spacefaring Civilization: The Science of Volition”

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

  1. Markets as Non-Coercive Discovery Processes
    • Markets provide a solid foundation on which to build civilizational progress.
    • Critically, market transactions are voluntary, revealing value through choice.
    • Value is determined by the buyer, not by producer claims.
    • Decentralized systems serve diverse preferences more effectively.
  2. Volitional Science: A Framework for Subjective Value
    • “Science of volition” applies scientific inquiry to valuation.
    • Explains how inventions become market-tested innovations as a result of user evaluation.
    • Recasts entrepreneurship as an experimental process.
  3. Entrepreneurship as Practical Experimentation
    • Every entrepreneurial act is a hypothesis tested in the marketplace.
    • Consumer adoption serves as confirmation or rejection.
    • Iteration builds cumulative, practical knowledge.
  4. Value Emerges from Customer Experience
    • What matters most is the post-exchange experience.
    • Retention and referrals follow consistent value delivery.
    • Businesses must design both the exchange and the lived experience.
  5. Time Horizons and Civilizational Progress
    • Extending time horizons beyond quarterly results reshapes strategy.
    • Long-term orientation changes investment and innovation incentives.
    • Civilizational progress requires durable, compounding growth.
  6. Intellectual Property and “Primary Capitalism”
    • A proposed system for registering and licensing scientific ideas.
    • Two principles: non-coercive use and positive-market royalty agreements.
    • A public registry would let innovators license without losing diffusion.
  7. Alternative Corporate Structures: Equity vs. Revenue Shares
    • Distinction between ownership (equity) and revenue participation.
    • Aligns incentives between entrepreneurs and collaborators.
    • Designed to reduce conflict and foster cooperation.
  8. Opportunity To Move Beyond Employer–Employee Relationships
    • Suggestion to replace fixed employment with value-based associations.
    • Contributors compensated through revenue shares rather than wages.
    • Though challenging in practice, this could align incentives more closely.
  9. Asset Stewardship as a Driver of Value
    • Neglecting assets reduces customer experience and long-run value.
    • Maintaining and improving assets safeguards future value creation.
    • Short-term profit extraction at the expense of assets undermines sustainability.
  10. Science and Innovation as Civilizational Engines
    • Science and markets are cumulative processes that push progress forward.
    • Scientists could engage in markets of ideas through licensing systems.
    • Linking science more directly to entrepreneurship broadens prosperity.
  11. Civilizational Risk and the Spacefaring Imperative
  • Humanity faces existential risk from destructive technologies.
  • Expanding into space spreads risk and accesses new resources.
  • Progress must be paired with governance that preserves freedom.
  1. Institutional Transformation for Civilizational Shifts
  • Legal and incentive changes are key to enabling innovation.
  • Open markets, licensing mechanisms, and long time horizons drive progress.
  • Entrepreneurial leadership is central to building new institutions.

Episode #73. Systems, Value & Action: Organizational Design with Mike Jones

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This episode has been reposted from Strategy Meets Reality Podcast.

How do organizations create meaningful value in a world that’s complex, nonlinear, and constantly changing?

In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings talks with Mike Jones — consultant, organizational psychologist, and host of Strategy Meets Reality — about systems thinking, value creation, and practical implementation. Mike explains why older, linear management models let people down in adaptive environments, how leaders should think about value exchange and asset stewardship, and why action and learning matter more than perfect forecasting.

Key insights include:

  • Why systems thinking is essential for organizations operating in a complex, adaptive world.
  • How value is discovered through exchange and experience—not merely engineered inside firms.
  • Why action, not endless planning, generates the information leaders need to adapt and create value.

This episode is for founders and leaders who want frameworks that actually work in messy, real-world organizations.

Resources:

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Learn more about Strategy Meets Reality Podcast

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

1. Systems Thinking Is the Right Mental Model

  • Organizations are adaptive systems (not machines).
  • Systems change in response to internal and external signals.
  • Leaders must design for adaptation, not for control.

2. Old Management Models Are Becoming Obsolete

  • 19th/20th-century function-based organizations are designed for continuity and assume predictability.
  • Those models prioritize control, measurement and efficiency in a stable environment.
  • In dynamic markets, those assumptions are wrong – they cause mismatch and brittleness.

3. Value Is Discovered, Not Merely Produced

  • Value emerges through exchanges and customer experience relative to customer expectations and aspirations.
  • Producers can’t unilaterally declare value—customers reveal it through choices.
  • Pricing is downstream of the value exchange; customer response validates value.

4. Value Exchange and the Customer Experience

  • The value exchange is followed by a value experience that determines repeat behavior.
  • Consistently meeting expectations in experience is central to retention and referrals.
  • Design and operations must orchestrate both the exchange and the subsequent experience – even those parts of it that are invisible to the producer..

5. Asset Stewardship Matters for Sustained Value

  • Creating less value means that assets have depreciated.
  • Neglecting infrastructure or capabilities reduces the customer experience.
  • Investment in assets is an investment in future value creation.

6. Teams Need Clarity, Roles and Autonomy

  • Clear role definition and trust among team members enable fast, coordinated action.
  • Self-organizing teams reduce the friction of top-down control.
  • Empowered teams adapt quicker to changing conditions.

7. Action Over Endless Analysis

  • Action creates evidence: you learn by doing, not by over-modeling.
  • Speed of iteration produces information to update beliefs and strategy.
  • Execution (tested action) beats perfect plans in uncertain contexts.

8. Failure Is Informational, Not Just Negative

  • Small experiments reveal what customers do and don’t value.
  • Failure is a feedback and learning mechanism that refines hypotheses.
  • Low-cost tests reduce downside while increasing learning velocity.

9. Leadership Is About Intent and Moral Commitment

  • Values and intent shape how organizations interpret signals.
  • Leaders’ moral framing (why they create value) affects long-run choices.
  • Purpose-aligned decisions sustain culture through ambiguity.

10. Institutions & Policy Create the Operating Environment

  • Policy layers and management rules can add friction and cost.
  • Policy chaos raises the cost and risk of investment.
  • Entrepreneurs must design-in resilience given institutional uncertainty.

11. Capital Allocation Requires Courage and Judgment

  • Capital must be deployed without perfect knowledge; courage is a factor.
  • Investors and entrepreneurs balance risk, timing, and learning horizons.
  • Resource commitment is necessary for the discovery process.

12. Organizations Must Design for Continuous Adaptation

  • Systems of review (after-action learning) are essential for improvement.
  • Simplicity of communication and clarity of purpose reduce internal noise.
  • The work of leaders is to enable learning at scale and speed, not to try to eliminate uncertainty.

Episode #72. How Entrepreneurial Businesses Can Harvest The Science of Meaning: Semiotics, Emotion, and Customer Value With Duncan Berry

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Why do customers choose one offering over another—often in a split second? In this episode of The Value Creators Podcast, Hunter Hastings talks with Duncan Berry, PhD, a consultant to leading brands at the intersection of semiotics, psychology, and neurology. Duncan explains how value is meaning from the customer’s point of view, why most behavior is pre-conscious and emotional, and how entrepreneurs can design signals, experiences, and narratives that align with what people actually feel and do.

Key insights include:

  • Value = meaning: Start from the customer’s lived experience, not the firm’s internal value chain.
  • Emotion and speed: People form judgments in tens of milliseconds; design must communicate instantly.
  • Signals & archetypes: Semiotics and association help brands encode meaning customers recognize fast.

This conversation reframes value creation as a human science: understand meaning, design signals, and earn the right to your customer’s next choice.

Resources:

➡️ Learn What They Didn’t Teach You In Business School: The Value Creators Online Business Course

Learn more about Applied Iconology

Connect with Duncan Berry on LinkedIn

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The Value Creators on Substack

Knowledge Capsule

1. Value Is Meaning (when it is viewed through the lens of Austrian economics)

  • Value doesn’t reside in the object; customers bring meaning to it.
  • Entrepreneurs discover that meaning through exchange and experience.
  • Start with the customer’s perspective, not internal metrics.

2. From Value Chain to Customer Bullseye

  • Traditional value creation models taught in business school (like Michael Porter’s 5 Forces model) pursue a linear process in the wrong direction – from the inside of the company to the outside..
  • The correct direction is to work backwards from the customer to uncover what they truly prize.
  • Treat internal processes as means, not ends.

3. Emotion Drives Choice

  • Much consumer behavior is habitual and pre-conscious.
  • Emotional states shape attention, preference, and loyalty.
  • Blend qualitative + quantitative tools to surface emotions that matter.

4. Bandwidth & Filtering

  • The nervous system processes millions of bits per second; all but a tiny fraction of them are filtered out and never register in a customer’s consciousness.
  • Attention is scarce; perception is heavily pre-conscious.
  • Design for fast, intuitive appraisal, not rational analysis.

5. First Impressions in ~50 ms

  • People form website/app reactions in tens of milliseconds.
  • Color, typography, layout, and affordances carry instant meaning.
  • Consistency turns quick impressions into trust.

6. Semiotics Beyond Logos

  • Semiotics = how signs and symbols convey meaning.
  • Markets are signal systems; customers interpret patterns, not parts.
  • Map the signals your category encodes (and where you fit).

7. Category Cues

  • Packaging, labels, and form factors imply attributes (e.g., “healthy”).
  • Misaligned cues create friction or rejection.
  • Align design language with the meanings your audience expects.

8. Associative > Persuasive (Often)

  • Associative networks can outperform direct persuasion.
  • Build webs of related cues that guide perception holistically.
  • Over time, associations become a moat for your brand.

9. Archetypes Compress Complexity

  • Archetypes are dense packets of meaning humans intuitively grasp.
  • Use them to organize story, design, and messaging coherently.
  • Avoid clichés—choose archetypes that fit your promise.

10. Design as Valuation Engine

  • IConsumers are constantly evaluating – as an experience, not a computation..
  • Design orchestrates the sensorium (sight, sound, touch) to create value.
  • Efficiency matters, but experience moves the needle.

11. What AI Can’t (Yet) Feel

  • AI models patterns but lacks embodied, sensory experience.
  • Human perception shifts with context; static models lag.
  • Advantage: entrepreneurs can notice subtle gradations and adapt.

12. Experiment with a Hypothesis

  • A/B tests help—when tied to a value hypothesis.
  • Avoid “spray & pray”; let judgment and neuroscience inform tests.
  • Iterate toward finer distinctions customers actually care about.