Creative Destruction and the Rise of the Creator Capital Market
How Joel Mokyr’s Nobel-winning theory of innovation connects to GigaStar’s mission of democratizing the Creator Economy.
As part of GigaStar’s recognition as a finalist in the Chicago Innovation Awards, Chief Marketing Officer Sarah McNabb recently attended an Innovation Session at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Fittingly, Northwestern had just made international news; its own Professor Joel Mokyr received the 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on innovation and “creative destruction.”
His ideas about how progress emerges through knowledge and institutional change also reflect GigaStar’s mission to democratize opportunity in the Creator Economy.
A New Nobel for an Old Idea
When Northwestern University economist Joel Mokyr won the 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the award recognized more than decades of scholarship — it spotlighted an idea reshaping every modern industry: creative destruction.
Mokyr’s work explores how knowledge, competition, and institutions fuel continuous waves of innovation. His insight builds on Joseph Schumpeter’s classic notion that “the old must die for the new to live,” but goes further.
He shows that progress doesn’t happen automatically; it happens when societies create systems that reward curiosity, experimentation, and the open exchange of ideas.
That same principle now defines the modern Creator Economy. The industries Mokyr once studied (textiles, steel, railroads) are giving way to the digital workshops of YouTube, TikTok, and beyond. The tools are different, but the dynamics are identical: new Creators, new technologies, and new financial models are rewriting how value is produced and shared.
From Steam Engines to Streaming Channels
Mokyr’s historical research centers on why the Industrial Revolution began in Europe instead of somewhere else. His answer: the region’s rare mix of useful knowledge, mechanical competence, and supportive institutions.
In 18th-century England, inventors could experiment freely, artisans had the skill to turn designs into machines, and markets rewarded better ideas. The result was exponential growth.
Today’s Creator Economy mirrors that evolution:
- Useful knowledge: Creators study audience data, retention metrics, and algorithmic behavior, turning creativity into a science.
- Mechanical competence: A solo Creator with a camera and editing software can now build a media empire that once required an entire studio.
- Supportive institutions: Platforms, fintech infrastructure, and the rise of financial platforms for Creators (such as GigaStar Market) can help fund creative longevity.
The pattern repeats: when the barriers to creation fall, and when institutions evolve to support those Creators, economic revolutions follow.
GigaStar: Creative Destruction in Motion
For over a decade, the Creator Economy has been framed by the equation: YouTube + Advertisers = Revenue.
Creators were at the center of the ecosystem, but were not its full beneficiaries. Advertisers held the capital. YouTube managed the flow. Audiences consumed passively.
GigaStar aims to rewrite that equation.
On GigaStar Market, Creators can raise capital by offering shares of their future YouTube AdSense revenue through revenue-sharing securities offerings.
Investors who participate have the potential to receive monthly revenue distributions from the Creator’s YouTube AdSense.
Investment offerings are speculative, illiquid, and involve a high degree of risk, including the risk of loss of your entire investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
That shift turns communities into active participants in the Creator’s journey.
It also converts a traditionally opaque income stream (YouTube AdSense revenue) into an investable asset. This is creative destruction applied to finance itself.
Just as Mokyr’s inventors reengineered industry by democratizing access to machines, GigaStar is reengineering capital by democratizing access to YouTube Creator revenue.
Building the Next Market Evolution
The in-progress build of the GigaStar Secondary Market Digital Alternative Trading System (“ATS”) is the next stage of that transformation*.
Once launched, if an active and liquid secondary market exists, investors will be able to trade Creator revenue shares, buying and selling digital asset securities representing YouTube revenue, through a regulated marketplace.
That’s not just innovation in payments or crowdfunding. It’s structural innovation for the Creator Economy — a fundamental redesign of who can participate (lowering the barrier of entry for individuals) through Regulation Crowdfunding, how liquidity works via an online platform, and how creative value is priced through price discovery on a trading platform.
Mokyr’s framework helps explain why that matters.
He argued that long-run progress depends on institutions that adapt to new forms of knowledge.
GigaStar envisions that its future digital ATS will do just that: launch a modern financial environment hinged on revenue tied to creative work rather than industrial output.
In doing so, it broadens participation and fuels the next wave of potential economic growth for the Creator Economy.
*There is no guarantee of an active or liquid secondary market, and investments are subject to market risk and will fluctuate in value. Investors may not be able to find a buyer, or the sale price could be much lower than the amount invested. GigaStar Securities LLC is an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA/SIPC. Secondary trading is conducted via GigaStar Securities’ SEC-registered ATS. The ATS will only trade Digital Asset Securities.
Investment offerings are speculative, illiquid, and involve a high degree of risk, including the risk of loss of your entire investment. This communication is provided for information purposes only. GigaStar Securities does not make any recommendations or offer investment advice.
Creative Destruction at the Human Level
Of course, every wave of innovation disrupts what came before.
Mokyr called this the “dual nature of progress”: creation always carries destruction in its wake. The printing press ended the scribal trade. The automobile displaced the carriage industry. YouTube challenged traditional television.
And now, GigaStar is challenging an old finance model.
Instead of relying on loans or brand deals, Creators can finance their growth strategies by partnering with their community. Instead of passive audiences, investors can become revenue-share holders through a securities offering. Instead of centralized media giants, value flows between Creators and investors by way of automated smart contracts.*
*Investment offerings are speculative, illiquid, and involve a high degree of risk, including the risk of loss of your entire investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
The beneficiaries are not just institutions but individuals, just as Mokyr envisioned when he said that “innovation flourishes where the curious are free and the barriers to participation are low.”
A Framework for Shared Growth
In Mokyr’s lens, creative destruction is sustainable only when society manages three critical tensions:
- Openness vs. Compliance — Innovation requires freedom, but also fairness. GigaStar’s framework helps ensure that Creators are equipped to understand SEC offering rules and regulations that enable companies to offer and sell securities through crowdfunding.*
- Competition vs. Cooperation — Growth thrives on rivalry, but progress depends on shared standards. By centralizing issuance, payouts, and soon, trading, GigaStar provides a common infrastructure for Creators to build upon.*
- Novelty vs. Stability — Too much change can create chaos; too little, stagnation. GigaStar’s regulated marketplace balances novelty with accountability, ensuring creative capital remains both creatively dynamic and dependable.
Through that balance, we believe that creative destruction becomes not a threat, but potentially a renewable engine of progress.
*Investment offerings are speculative, illiquid, and involve a high degree of risk, including the risk of loss of your entire investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
*There is no guarantee of an active or liquid secondary market, and investments are subject to market risk and will fluctuate in value. Investors may not be able to find a buyer, or the sale price could be much lower than the amount invested.
A Market Where Creativity Meets Capital
Just as 19th-century industrialists built railways and stock exchanges to fund their ventures, 21st-century Creators have GigaStar as an option, a financial platform purpose-built for the next generation of entrepreneurs: Creators.
Each Creator offering is a micro-revolution: a link between innovation and investment.
Each monthly revenue distribution to investors is proof that the new economy can run on a revenue-sharing partnership, not gatekeeping.
And we imagine that each future trade on GigaStar’s Secondary Market* has the potential to represent a milestone in the evolution of creative capital — an economy that rewards imagination as much as machinery.
*Investment offerings are speculative, illiquid, and involve a high degree of risk, including the risk of loss of your entire investment. There is no guarantee of an active or liquid secondary market, and investments are subject to market risk and will fluctuate in value. Investors may not be able to find a buyer, or the sale price could be much lower than the amount invested. GigaStar Securities LLC is an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA/SIPC. Secondary trading is conducted via GigaStar Securities’ SEC-registered ATS. The ATS will only trade Digital Asset Securities. This communication is provided for information purposes only. GigaStar Securities does not make any recommendations or offer investment advice.
Conclusion: Mokyr’s Legacy in the Creator Era
Joel Mokyr’s Nobel Prize isn’t just a celebration of history; it’s a roadmap for the future. He taught that progress depends on knowledge, incentives, and the institutions that connect them.
That’s what GigaStar is building — a modern institution for the Creator Age. A marketplace where curiosity, talent, and capital meet. A system where creative destruction doesn’t leave people behind — it brings them in.
The Creator Economy is no longer a niche. We believe it is the next great engine of global growth. And GigaStar is here to help it grow.
This communication is provided by Creator Networks, Inc. (dba GigaStar). GigaStar is the Parent Company of GigaStar Portal, LLC (dba GigaStar Market), an SEC-registered funding portal member of FINRA, and GigaStar Technologies LLC, offering blockchain and smart contract solutions via GigaStar Portfolio. GigaStar Securities LLC is an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA/SIPC. Secondary trading is conducted via GigaStar Securities’ SEC-registered ATS. The ATS will only trade Digital Asset Securities.
Investment offerings are speculative, illiquid, and involve a high degree of risk, including the risk of loss of your entire investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There is no guarantee of an active or liquid secondary market, and investments are subject to market risk and will fluctuate in value. Investors may not be able to find a buyer, or the sale price could be much lower than the amount invested.
Neither GigaStar nor any of its affiliated companies provides legal, regulatory, financial, or tax advice. Any opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and are for informational purposes only. The information and opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice and do not take into account the particular investment objectives, financial situation, or needs of any specific investor(s). Additionally, any factual content in this material was obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but we do not warrant the accuracy or completeness of any information contained herein and provide no assurance that this information is, in fact, accurate.
Projections are inherently subject to substantial and numerous uncertainties and to a wide variety of significant business, economic, and competitive risks, and the assumptions underlying the projections may be inaccurate. Forward‐looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward‐looking statements.
The content herein does not constitute a solicitation of an offer to buy security(ies).
