SEMINAR SERIES: Youngjin Yoo
‘Rethinking Value, Technology, and the Firm in the Age of Generative Machines’ explores how generative technologies are reshaping markets, organizations, and value creation—offering fresh perspectives and inviting discussion on the future of the digital economy.
Rethinking Value, Technology, and the Firm in the Age of Generative Machines
Abstract
Modern social science was built for scarcity. Its theories assume diminishing marginal utility, replication of predetermined outputs, and firms that economize on exchange frictions. Generative computational systems challenge each foundation. This talk develops new theoretical foundations for economic order in the age of generative machines, arguing that the runtime revolution requires fundamental reconceptualization across three domains. First, the Three Flips — Digital, Organic, and Semantic — transform the logic of technology from replication to contextual generation. Second, a theory of computational value addresses a possibility absent from existing demand theory: individual-level increasing marginal utility, actively produced through deliberate design as generative systems adapt and co-evolve with each interaction. Third, generative externalities necessitate a new theory of the firm. Transaction costs gave rise to hierarchies; network externalities to platforms. In the generative economy, the firm exists to produce increasing marginal utility and capture surplus value from unanticipated semantic recombination.
Brief Biography
Youngjin Yoo is Professor of Information Systems and Innovation in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is Academic Director of the LSE Lifelong Learning Digital & Innovation. His research focuses on digital innovation, examining intersections among technology, organizations, and design. He has published articles in leading scholarly journals including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, Communications of the ACM, and Academy of Management Journal. He currently serves as a Senior Editor for Information Systems Research and has previously held editorial roles at MIS Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and Management Science. His research has received funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the National Research Foundation of Korea.