Jurgen Appelo

Rethinking governance for the one-person business in the age of intelligent machines.

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

In the age of AI, do we even need traditional corporations? Can we not replace them with networks of contractors and AI-native entrepreneurs? Are the people with standard employment contracts laboring away on rapidly shrinking ships?

https://t.co/kPpaFgx3hr

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

People building agentic AI systems right now are reinventing a model a systems thinker published in 1972, and that management shrugged off as too complicated. OK, fine. Let’s simplify it.

https://t.co/f4MIzhwhVk

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

I do some of my best work as the only human in a room full of agents. Less politics, less small talk, more signal. For some autistic minds, that setup feels less like isolation and more like oxygen.
https://t.co/R7oNCxQq79

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"The risk you’re trying to avoid by waiting is made worse by the waiting. The protection against AI-related risk is not less AI experience. It’s more."

https://t.co/cfnNg0HnxP

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

Serious professionals realize they can curate tools, peers, clients, and agents themselves. That's a Team of One, and it's rising fast.
https://t.co/lmkQi5j3F7

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

Every solopreneur I know does a messy mix: outsourcing some skills, exploring new ones, protecting a few treasured ones, juggling the rest. Welcome to cognitive adaptation.
https://t.co/WHzIhmrlSE

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"If you see AI‑driven efficiency with no credible plan to redeploy people into new, verified work, you have two options. Admit that you don’t have a real AI strategy. Or cut people and call it AI transformation."

https://t.co/CicwrGUqvY

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"Analytical thinking ensures that the logic defined by systems thinking can be executed in reality. It’s indispensable—but only once the bigger picture is already clear. "

https://t.co/2Z0Rfar5wT

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

Boards of directors exist to prevent CEOs from mortgaging the future for present-day metrics. In practice? Most board members are 65+ fossils who barely understand YouTube, let alone AI's disruptive potential.
https://t.co/EiLvGzUPhr

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

Your 10,000-person corporation vs three people with AI agents. Disruption once required human capital. Now it takes computational power and clever prompting. Tiny teams outmaneuver giants with a fraction of the headcount.
https://t.co/UkZYebxzFd

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"Stop looking for full time work. Start looking for fractional work. That’s a real flip in your brain about how you approach everything that comes next. The conversations you take. The way you describe yourself."

https://t.co/c9pPBLDtHW

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"We have to sound some kind of alarm that work culture is being eroded and talk about how we might be on a path that leads to mistakes we can never undo."

https://t.co/zyLPSLaym3

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

Asked four AIs to research AI terminology for the future of work.

Expected maybe 50 terms.

Got 250+.

Each model seemed determined to outdo the others.
https://t.co/YXa0TKRIws

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

Anxiety comes from trying to speed up everything at once. Real acceleration means picking one process and making it tantalizingly faster, then moving to the next.
https://t.co/n9xOI6CGMT

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"The knowledge economy will look a lot like the art market post-1935: a long tail that explodes in volume and collapses in price, and a top end that becomes more valuable and more concentrated."

https://t.co/3fdU7khPbz

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

Cooking beats prompting. A pot of Persian stew gives smell, heat, timing, texture, failure, pride. LLMs give tokens. I'll keep the bots for work, but joy still lives in the kitchen.
https://t.co/bbsORam7gJ

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"Under a fully automated economy, where robotic soldiers fight the wars and AI agents run the businesses, your body is a net negative to the economic system."

https://t.co/fF7DaE8xOm

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"The operating model of the future is moving away from human coordination to AI agent coordination."

https://t.co/4EH9e0oRx8

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"The moment your product or service can be fully provided by an LLM is the moment your business ceases to have any value in the market."

https://t.co/5qcHoIkquy

[Jurgen Appelo @jurgenappelo]

"Not everyone will recognize the agentic era as an opportunity for compounding attention. Many will let theirs wander to whatever is loudest. That creates an opening for those who choose differently."

https://t.co/KDkXMUuGtS