In the next few posts, I plan to publish a short series of articles to challenge leaders to think a bit harder about how much the world is changing.

To start, I want to highlight ways in which loosely organized groups of individuals are pushing back on the bedrock of business competition, which is the assumption that companies compete with other companies.

“You will probably work for a protocol someday.” That’s how U Oregon finance professor Stephen McKeon often wraps up his class on the crypto economy. Among other things, he means that increasingly individuals may earn their living by working for a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). DAOs have no leaders or owners, but rather are a community of individuals who work together via a set of agreements or rules that are written into code.

This prospect excites many entrepreneurs, investors and individuals. Some talk about replacing Facebook—a corporate entity—with a Facebook-like community in which the participants are the owners. They want to cut out the middleman, and the middleman is every company.

When people get excited about blockchain or Web3, it’s often because these, too, can be utilized to shift power and influence away from companies and towards individuals.

I’m not naive. Some of this is wishful thinking. Even if it is more than that, I hardly expect companies to disappear anytime soon. And yet, disruption always comes from the edges and the leaders of successful, established companies are typically the last to realize when their industry is being disrupted.

When you combine these technological innovations with some of the forces unleashed by the pandemic—worker shortages, supply chain chaos, and a volatile economy—we are ripe for significant changes. What does it mean to be agile when the shifts that are coming are more dramatic than any time in recent memory? Stay tuned..