This paper presents a way to build a conceptual framework for establishing the economic impact of human resources on projects in the product market. The starting point for this search is the rejection of the assumption of the substitutability of human capital, ingrained in nearly all discussions about the economic value of a project in the product market. The acting management team has already climbed a particular learning curve. This experience translates into a well-defined assembly of skills and know-how “honed in house” that are not marketable and that can be the basis for sustained competitive advantage. This specificity is encoded in the parameters of a function that represents the responses of the team to aspiration levels proposed by management vis-à-vis its perceptions of market conditions. How the net present value of the project depends on those parameters reflects the weight of the human resources on its value. This approach reveals that the contribution of human resources to the value of a project does not follow any simple additive rule, and that the notion of added value comes mainly from comparisons against the performance of competing management teams.