The Networked Firm: Capital Allocation in the Age of Blockchain and AI

In The Networked Firm: Capital Allocation in the Age of Blockchain and AI, authors Kevin Owocki, Daniel Stringer, and Daniel Ospina map out the most significant shift in organizational design since the invention of the modern corporation. They argue that AI collapses the cost of cognition and blockchain collapses the cost of trust—undermining the very coordination frictions that once made large, hierarchical firms the optimal way to get work done.

Drawing from foundational economic theory (Coase, Ouchi, transaction cost economics) and real-world case studies, the authors show how discovery, verification, enforcement, negotiation, dispute resolution, and governance are becoming programmable. As these costs fall toward zero, traditional firms begin to unbundle—and reassemble—into Networked Firms: adaptive ecosystems of humans, agents, and protocols coordinating through transparent, algorithmic systems rather than managerial bureaucracy.

The book uses capital allocation as its lens because it is the first function where the dissolution is happening in the open. Readers are taken inside experiments like quadratic funding, retroactive public goods funding, smart-contract-driven incentive systems, AI-evaluated grantmaking, on-chain reputation, and autonomous coordination mechanisms. These examples illustrate how resources can now be allocated with a level of scalability, legitimacy, and transparency that legacy organizations struggle to match.

Owocki, Stringer, and Ospina provide a framework for understanding how firms, DAOs, startups, and ecosystems will evolve as coordination becomes cheaper, more auditable, and more participatory. The result is not the disappearance of the firm, but the emergence of a new organizational archetype—one that behaves more like an open network than a rigid hierarchy.

This book is for founders, investors, operators, DAO builders, technologists, policymakers, and anyone working at the edge of technological and organizational change. It warns that the coming transformation could produce either more equitable, mission-aligned systems—or more automated, opaque ones. Ultimately, The Networked Firm is an invitation to shape the future of coordination before it’s defined for us by code.

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