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Nic Brisbourne’s view from London on venture capital and exploiting change in technology and media
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Coase’s law - craze for collaboration explained

Started by brisbourne · 6 months ago

In 1937  British socialist Ronald Coase published his seminal paper The Theory of the Firm in which he argued that business is done in corporations rather than through a multitude of peer to peer agreements because transaction costs are lower in corporations.  In particular they reduce the ... Continue reading »

2 comments

  • Nic, quite a lot of the thinking / modelling in Web 1.0 was driven by Coase's thinking (the disintegrating corporation, clover leaf career etc etc was a common mid 90's thingy).

    Turned out that a transaction is often far more than just the search / find bit...there is a whole dance around trust (in the broadest sense - can you deliver / are you honest / will you survive / can I sue you / etc ) that also comes into play.

    Wikinomics as a book - imho - is too much on the "rah rah" stuff and a bit light on the "cynic" parts of overall transaction economics eg agency theory, asymmetric market theory etc etc.

    You just have to look at Wikipedia, Digg etc to see how these more cynical sides of transaction games are played
  • Thanks Alan. Wikinomics is definitely on the ra ra side. You've got to find a way to believe though, right?

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