CONCEPT
Trapped Value
Moore's term for productivity and quality improvements theoretically possible but practically unreachable because existing processes were designed around human limitations — the strategic target AI deployment should prioritize.
Trapped value is Moore's operational reframing of where AI should be deployed. The question is not 'Where can we use AI?' but 'Where is the most value trapped in our current processes?' Trapped value accumulates wherever systems were designed around human limitations: the customer service operation that routes every inquiry through a human agent regardless of complexity, the healthcare system that requires a radiologist to review every normal scan, the educational system that delivers identical lectures to students with wildly different needs. These are environments where AI can release enormous value — but only if the deployment is accompanied by the whole product components that capture the release rather than squandering it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Moore distinguishes trapped value from ordinary efficiency improvements. A marginal productivity gain on an already-optimized process is not trapped value; it is incremental improvement. Trapped value is categorical — the productivity ceiling established by a process architecture that cannot be incrementally improved because its design assumptions no