Scale withoutconsolidation
Could AI help independent businesses work together with less overhead, without having to become one company?
In The Network Always Beats the Castle, Sam Schillace considers how AI could help work move beyond fixed reporting paths. I thought this was a good question there:
how do packet-switched teams, or companies, or AI agent networks, communicate across their boundaries without any of them being “in charge” of the others?
Could independent businesses get some of the benefits of operating as a larger company without sharing an owner?
I've written before about AI helping small businesses stay independent. Making it easier for those businesses to work together seems like another part of that opportunity. I've seen some first hand examples of the difficulty in coordination between businesses (part ordering, multi-layered service and support, etc) that makes this a compelling thought exercise.
Sam describes some of the work AI could take on:
AI can do this rote work: given a task and the people who will do it, surface the assumptions that need to be agreed on before anything flows, and check to make sure the goals were met consistently.
Think of a contractor bringing in a specialist for part of a job. An agent could help prepare the scope, check availability, and keep both businesses informed when the schedule changes. The owners still agree to the work and control what information they share. They spend less time chasing details. It seems like it would make an existing business relationship easier to manage.
Sam also makes a point here I thought was interesting:
The internet’s apparent freedom runs on extremely strict, hard-won, boring contracts between machines.
For the businesses involved, someone still needs to agree on payment, ownership of the customer relationship, and who handles a mistake. Easier coordination doesn't remove those responsibilities.
Whether this can support larger networks of independent businesses is a curious question to me. Sam's illustration is cool and is making me think different about the approach. One shared job seems like a good place to find out: less administrative work between two businesses, with each owner still in control of their part.