Main idea

Keeping your documents — the specs, the decks, the write-ups, the answers sent — gives the feeling of having capitalized. You have indeed kept something: a form, as it was sent at a given moment, to a given recipient.

Keeping the material that made it possible to produce them is a different gesture, and its object is not of the same nature. What is kept is no longer a trace of what you did, but a means of doing it again — of adapting, explaining, defending, extending.

On one side "here is what we sent", on the other "here is what we understood, decided, verified, discarded, and what we can still produce from it".

Why it matters

This shifts what we call capital in intellectual work. The visible result remains the document; the lasting value is the ability to produce several times without losing the substance.

It also gives a reason not to be satisfied with well-ordered archives. A complete documentary collection may carry no capability at all, if it contains only forms.

Nuances and limits

A past form keeps a value of its own: it is authoritative, it proves what was said to whom and when. That is a legal and contractual use, not a production use.

And a preserved capability also expires: decisions never revisited become constraints you can no longer justify.

Open questions

• Can a capability be measured other than by actual reuse, that is, after the fact?