The paper uses two concepts to organise the talent management literature: talent philosophies and a theory of value. It introduces the notion of talent management architectures and first analyses four talent management philosophies and the different claims they make about the value of individual talent and talent management architectures to demonstrate the limitations of human capital theory in capturing current developments. Having demonstrated the complexity of issues being research, it then syntheses these back down into a theory of value, and develops a framework based on four separate value-generating processes (value creation, value capture, value leverage and value protection). This framework draws upon a number of non-HR literatures, such as those on value creation, the RBV perspective, dynamic capabilities, and global knowledge management, and its used to understand the nature of value and how this might inform the design of any talent management system or architecture. The paper articulates 14 research propositions that the field now needs to evidence and suggests how research might now address these