In a traditional market, someone who is 90 percent as skilled or works 90 percent as hard creates 90 percent as much value and thus can earn 90 percent as much money. That’s absolute performance. By contrast, a software programmer who writes a slightly better mapping application—one that loads a little faster, has slightly more complete data, or prettier icons—might completely dominate a market. There would likely be little, if any, demand for the tenth-best mapping application, even it got the job done almost as well. This is relative performance. People will not spend time or effort on the
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