Two mid-sized companies adopted AI agents at the same spend and the same enthusiasm. Eighteen months later one compounds and one fragments. The only variable was ownership.
An engineering manager wants to add an agent to the team. Nobody owns the answer. Onboarding AI teammates is org design, and HR is the department that already knows how teams work.
Work lives in the cracks between tools, with humans as couriers. AI agents expose the cost of this. The next category will center the work itself in one shared, living workspace.
