From C. Thi Nguyen’s
The Score:
Scoring systems are a particularly seductive format for simplified values.
And value capture isn't just for individuals. Groups can be value-captured by metrics and measures that come from external sources.
A newspaper can be value-captured by clicks and page views; a whole police precinct can be value-captured by the case-closure rate. In fact, large-scale institutions will turn out to be among the most vulnerable to value capture, because metrics speak directly in the language of bureaucracy.
I named value capture after regulatory capture-a problem in which government regulators go astray. These regulators are supposed to serve the public interest. Regulatory capture occurs when they end up, instead, serving the interests of the very companies they're supposed to be regulating. For example, the Food and Drug Administration is supposed to regulate the pharmaceutical indus-try. But sometimes some government regulators become friends with folks in the pharmaceutical industry-and the cushiest job for retired government regulators is often on the other side. So they start identifying with the pharmaceutical companies and caring about those corporations' interests. Those regulators have been captured by the industries they were supposed to regulate.
So, too, with value capture: Your values might get captured by some external metric, so that they no longer serve your own interests, but the interests of some external institution or process.
That’s a handy term. Most companies are
willingly value captured.