Introduction

Introduction

This section establishes the conceptual foundation for the research. We begin with precise definitions of the key terms — autonomous business, business emergence, agentic AI, and decentralized autonomous organization — before articulating the research thesis and scope.

The chapter concludes with the Theater-Illusion-Emergence spectrum, a framework developed through our forensic case studies for evaluating claims of business autonomy. This spectrum distinguishes marketing theater from genuine emergent capability, and is used as an analytical lens throughout the remaining chapters.