Price the Job, Not the Tool

Part 6 - The Autonomous Enterprise: A World Priced by Results

Chapter 13: The Future of the Firm

The journey we have taken is not just a commercial or technical one. It is a structural one. The shift from access-based subscriptions to outcome-based contracts is more than a new pricing model; it is a new organizing principle for the entire economy. As this model scales, as the “autonomous agent” becomes the default way to buy and sell high-stakes digital services, it will inevitably and radically reshape the very nature of the firm itself.

This final chapter is a speculative but grounded look at the future this model creates: the rise of the Autonomous Enterprise.

For the last century, the firm, as described by economist Ronald Coase, has been a hierarchy. It was a “command and control” structure designed to minimize “transaction costs.” It was cheaper to hire a full-time …