We recently published a peer-reviewed article in the International Review of Applied Economics that asks a straightforward question: do employee-owned companies — specifically, ESOP firms — have structural advantages that position them to handle these challenges better than conventionally owned firms?

Something unexpected happened when Anthropic released the AI-powered coding tool Claude Code last year. Claude Code was designed for software developers—a command-line interface (CLI) where engineers could ask Claude to read their codebases, run commands, and create code and apps through natural language prompts. 

Picture this: it’s annual meeting time at an employee-owned company. The CEO walks through the valuation report, explains how revenue growth drove a 12% increase in share value, and then she watches the room. 

A few seasoned employees nod along. But some or maybe even most of the others look politely lost.

The good news? AI can help.

For decades, the browser has been our gateway to the internet — a quiet tool that waited for instructions. We typed, clicked, and hunted for meaning.

But with the rise of AI browsers like Perplexity’s Comet and ChatGPT’s Atlas, the browser itself is learning to summarize, reason, and even act. It can plan a trip, brief you on a topic, or draft a message in your tone — turning the web from a search field into a conversational partner.

A few weeks ago, I entered the wild world of “vibecoding”—that magical space where enthusiasm meets AI tools, and somehow, things get built… at least for some people.

A wild, fun, frustrating adventure ensued and at certain points I may have used some language that’s not printable here… but did I build something?

Read on, folks…

We’re excited and honored to be traveling to a number of wonderful conferences starting next month including the NCEO Fall Forum in Philadelphia and the Great Game of Business Conference in Arlington, Texas!

This week, I attended the Future of Equity Symposium, hosted by Rutgers University’s Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing in Palo Alto, CA. I was honored to be there to facilitate a discussion on the opportunities and implications of artificial intelligence for the employee ownership movement.

The development of modern AI systems has raised many questions about copyright law, particularly regarding the massive datasets used to train these models.

For employee-owned businesses and nonprofits using or considering generative AI, it helps to answer two critical questions that could impact your organization's legal and creative strategies.

In a world where AI adoption is reshaping how businesses operate, employee-owned and mission-driven organizations face unique opportunities and challenges. Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report, titled "The Year the Frontier Firm Is Born," provides valuable insights into emerging workplace trends that deserve special attention from organizations where employee empowerment and social impact drive decision-making.

As AI tools reshape how we work, a lot of attention has focused on potential job displacement and the changing nature of work. However, there's a strong case that employee-owned companies might have a special edge that many people haven't noticed yet.

Imagine if every employee in your organization had access to a personalized mentor that could support their development on a daily basis. How fast could your organization grow?