By Futurist Thomas Frey
Somewhere right now, an AI is filling out the paperwork to start a business that will never have a birthday party, never print business cards, and never need a retirement plan. It has a six-month lifespan built into its DNA. It will launch, sell, collect, and disappear — all before most human founders finish their first fundraising round.
For 400 years, we’ve built companies to last. We’ve named buildings after them, carved their founding dates into cornerstones, and measured success by longevity. General Electric. Ford. IBM. The corporation was invented as a legal machine for permanence — a way to outlive the mortality of any single founder.
That assumption is now cracking.
I’ve spent my career tracking the tools that change how humans organize themselves, and disposable companies are shaping up to be one of the strangest and most disruptive of them all. Not because the idea is complicated — it’s actually refreshingly simple — but because it inverts a belief so old we forgot it was a choice.
Continue reading… “The Rise of Disposable Companies”