The latter is not necessarily true - you might be creating tremendous value, but have barriers to market entry that are enormous such that you can only really create that value from within one of the existing players on the market. See aerospace, telecommunications, medicine, government contracting for examples of such industries. If I'm making a huge amount of added value for a large telecom, it's unlikely I can start a startup to compete with it, and given the state of the market I'm unlikely to make much more at their direct competitors. Thus, as long as my value is industry-specific, and the industries have large barriers to entry, I might be creating much more value than my salary but unable to leave and compete against my employer.