In terms of the first three, a lot of the value is in what economists call "positive network externalities", or "network effects".

If you walked out the door of Apple with source code and "source code" for their hardware, you could replicate a lot of their value for the immediate future, until they had time to cook up new stuff.

"If you walked out the door of Apple with source code and "source code" for their hardware, you could replicate a lot of their value for the immediate future, until they had time to cook up new stuff."

You are correct in that more of Facebook or Craigslist's values are comprised by network effects, but I still believe more of Apple is network effect than not.

Consider the walking-out-of-the-door-with-the-blueprints hypothetical. You would still need to cobble together a supply chain, i.e. glue together a string of "doers" and make sure the glue is strong enough so the whole thing doesn't fly apart like a 787.

Remember the Hacker News refrain about execution versus MBA-style "ideation"? The execution guys are valuable because they know where to find what and whom, not because they ninja together the eleventh hour code themselves.

> Consider the walking-out-of-the-door-with-the-blueprints hypothetical. You would still need to cobble together a supply chain, i.e. glue together a string of "doers" and make sure the glue is strong enough so the whole thing doesn't fly apart like a 787.

Maybe a more interesting hypothetical is "what could the 2nd place competitor do if they got blueprints and source code, and could use it freely?". In terms of Facebook and Craigslist, nothing much. In terms of Apple, Samsung could probably go to town with it, although I suppose you could also argue that "the right to use it freely" is in some ways the most important bit, as Samsung can probably replicate the hardware, and has good enough software at this point.

"You are conflating the 'thought vs. glue' ratio with the 'past thought vs. currently generating thought' ratio."

Glue takes thought, so the dichotomy is a bit rickety out of the door. I'm taking it as network value versus technical value. Both take present thought.