Post by Jeremy Curbey, MBA, MSPM

MIT & Harvard research just reframed the future of business — and Craig Hepburn captured it perfectly. AI won’t disrupt the enterprise by simply automating tasks. It’s about collapsing coordination costs — and that changes everything. The new paper, “The Coasean Singularity? Demand, Supply, and Market Design with AI Agents” by MIT, Harvard, BU & NBER researchers builds on Coase’s insight from 1937: firms exist because coordinating markets is expensive. Org charts, departments, meetings, approvals — all exist to manage human friction in search, alignment, negotiation, and enforcement. Now, AI agents are beginning to remove those frictions: Instantly matching suppliers Negotiating logistics & contracts Machine-to-machine transactions Humans only reviewing exceptions When coordination becomes nearly free, the architecture of business changes: Hierarchies → Networks, Departments → Agent ecosystems, Central control → Orchestration, Human bottlenecks → Autonomous negotiation. New markets unlock — micro-services, instant expertise, on-demand data. The long tail of the economy comes alive. But efficiency introduces a new constraint: alignment. In a world where every buyer and seller has an agent: Trust becomes machine-interpreted Proof-of-personhood becomes critical Governance & incentives matter more than speed We’re already seeing platform power shifts: Meta restricting external agents on WhatsApp; Amazon limiting autonomous agents in retail. These aren’t product decisions — they’re early signs of the agentic power struggle. Whoever controls AI gateways will shape value flow. Forward-thinking leaders aren’t asking, “How do we add AI?” They’re re-architecting coordination, trust, and identity. AI isn’t a feature. It’s infrastructure — the new plumbing of decision-making and value creation. Leadership question: How will your business operate when every process can think, bargain, and act — yet still needs human judgment and values to guide it? This future isn't hypothetical. It’s emerging in real time — one decision, one workflow, one agent at a time. Winners will build: Open agent ecosystems Trust & identity frameworks Governance & alignment standards Strategic advantage in an economy where coordination is nearly free AI isn’t replacing capitalism. It’s rewiring its operating system. Credit to Craig Hepburn and the brilliant researchers pushing this frontier. #AI #AgentEconomy #MIT #Harvard #FutureOfWork #EnterpriseAI #MarketDesign #Leadership #DigitalTransformation #CoaseanSingularity #AIInfrastructure https://lnkd.in/gdVgtrN7