Opacity-specificity tradeoff — in-group reputation is information-rich + opaque to outsiders; market reputation is transparent + information-poor

Claim: In-group reputation and market reputation sit on opposite ends of an opacity-specificity tradeoff.

• In-group is information-rich because the transmitter understands the work. A GC saying "X is a great project manager but their estimating is loose" transmits specific, actionable information. The cost is opacity — outsiders cannot see it without becoming insiders.
• Market reputation is transparent (anyone can see a 4.9-star Google rating) but information-poor — the star rating compresses thousands of contextual variables into a number.

Confidence: Synthesis; consistent with [[rindova-2005-being-good-vs-being-known]] and Spence-style signal-quality theory.

For Candid: Strategic implications:

• You cannot read in-group reputation from outside the in-group. Trying to estimate a prospect's standing without being a participant in the network produces systematic underestimation. You have to be in the room.
• Decompressing market reputation into informative signal (e.g., reading the substance of a few Google reviews rather than the star average) recovers some information but at high per-prospect cost.
• The opacity is a feature once Candid is inside the network — it generates information asymmetry vs competitors who are not in the network, just as it generates information asymmetry against Candid when Candid is not in the network.