What is my knowledge actually worth?
When commoditised knowledge sits in foundation models, and specialised domain knowledge sits in retrieval architectures, the value question becomes a unique reframing opportunity.
That is the question Pillar 3 asks of organisations, and it can be applied to an individual. The same framework becomes an enabling instrument: a way for any individual to dial in on where their value sits now, and where it is moving next.
Subject: the author · Snapshot: 22 April 2026
“How do you formalise that consulting?”
That question — mine, asked while mapping this page — is what Knowledge Strata answers. The list below is what I carry where no formal credential exists, and where the work of externalising is ongoing.
The experiment · what about you?
Most CVs tell you where someone worked. They do not tell you what someone carries. This page asks a different set of questions.
A warning worth the space: doing this is confronting. Most of us do not want to distill ourselves down into something this categorical — it feels reductive. But in an age where AI absorbs commoditised knowledge faster than any of us can, the alternative to doing it is operating below the layer you could be — and not knowing why. The confronting part is the evidence that the exercise matters.
Where this could go
The exercise on this page is the framework turned inward on one person. Three extensions sit naturally adjacent — each open, none yet a product. If any of them is the conversation you came to have, the door is open.
Thread one · for organisations
Apply the same exercise to every senior knowledge worker in the organisation. Where is each person operating, layer by layer? Where is the codification gap that, closed, lets that person work at the layer above? Personal development stops being “more skills” and starts being a deliberate move up the layers.
Thread two · for universities
Graduate career services have been answering the wrong question for a decade — matching credentials to job titles. The right question now is what knowledge layer a graduate is being trained at, and which layers an AI workforce has already absorbed. The framework gives a graduate a way to read the labour market they are actually entering.
Thread three · for individuals
Candidates can apply the framework to a prospective employer just as the employer applies it to them. How much of the organisation’s knowledge has been codified? Where is the L3b that only the founder holds, and how exposed is the role to that single point? The interview becomes a parity check, not a one-way assessment.
In an organisation, in a university, or to one person.
The framework makes the invisible visible. Applied to an organisation, it diagnoses where knowledge sits. Applied to an individual, it asks a question most knowledge workers have never been asked: how much of you is portable, how much is documented, how much is still only in your head? The rest is choice.