Book in development ยท Research programme
The Protocol Firm
Research and writing on how AI, autonomous agents and changing coordination costs may reshape companies, professional services and knowledge work.
The working thesis is that autonomous agents may decompose knowledge work, lower some coordination costs and allow more work to be orchestrated through software, protocols and networks rather than only through traditional organisational boundaries. It is ongoing research, not a finished doctrine.
The book
The Protocol Firm is being developed as a book-length argument about AI-native organisations, governance and the changing boundary of the firm.
Publication details, chapter structure and ordering information can be added here when they are real. For now, this page is the public home for the research and related essays.
- Status
- Book in development
- Scope
- AI-native organisations, delegated autonomy, governance, protocols and software-mediated markets.
- Next additions
- Draft chapter structure, related essays, update signup and future publication links.
Research areas
- Agentic organisations
- The changing structure of firms
- Humans and autonomous agents
- Unbundling professional services
- Fractional expertise
- Protocol-based coordination
- Organisational interfaces
- AI governance
- Risk and accountability
- Agent infrastructure
- Context and memory
- AI-native operating models
- The future of consulting
- The future of recruitment
- Software-mediated markets
Current Protocol Firm essays
The public series develops the argument article by article.
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The Protocol Firm
Published: at 05:00 PMAI makes more intelligence available to the firm, allowing execution capacity to grow without a proportional increase in human effort at the point of execution. The Protocol Firm asks how delegated authority remains governable, testable and open to correction.
Foundation series
The completed Firm Under AI series is the starting point: sixteen essays on coordination costs, managerial history, platforms and the boundary of the firm under AI.
16 published articles currently belong to that series.