---
id: "contrarian-sign-off-is-product"
type: "contrarian-insight"
source_timestamps: ["¶5"]
tags: ["economics", "value-proposition", "contrarian-insight"]
related: ["claim-sign-off-is-product", "concept-complementarity", "quote-sign-off-product"]
challenges: "The view that code or raw data output is the primary value driver, and that review/compliance is merely a transaction cost."
sources: ["futures"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-futures"
originDay: 2
articleStem: "hbr-cl-84-big-tech-capability-crisis"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/06/big-techs-looming-capability-crisis"
sourceTitle: "Big Tech’s Looming Capability Crisis"
---
# The Sign-Off Is the Product, Not a Transaction Cost

## Contrarian: The Sign-Off Is the Product, Not a Transaction Cost

**Conventional wisdom:** compliance, review, and sign-off are bureaucratic transaction costs that impede delivery of the *actual* product (the code, or the scan).

**The authors' inversion:** the raw output is cheap and commoditized; the **accountable, liable human sign-off *is* the actual product** the market purchases. This is the applied form of [[concept-complementarity|complementarity]] and is stated directly in the [[claim-sign-off-is-product|sign-off claim]] and the [[quote-sign-off-product|quote]].

> Enrichment: This is a *normative* economic claim, coherent with complementarity theory but a theoretical interpretation rather than direct evidence of market pricing.