Agentic Economies and the Agentification of Business Models

Thesis (MA)

Advisor(s): Alisa Mehler (alisa.mehler@tum.de)

Context

A new generation of AI systems can pursue goals over longer horizons, use tools, and act with limited supervision. These agents do not only produce outputs for human review, they initiate and complete tasks: searching, negotiating, ordering, scheduling, and coordinating with other systems. As they take on more of the work that used to sit between organizations and their customers or suppliers, the way value is created, delivered, and captured begins to shift.

This shift affects business models directly. Offerings that were designed for human interfaces are being restructured for machine consumption, pricing and access models are adapted to automated buyers, and intermediaries that once matched supply and demand face agents that can do the matching themselves. Firms must decide which parts of their value proposition to expose to external agents, which capabilities to keep proprietary, and how to remain visible in markets where the immediate customer may be software.

Beyond individual firms, an emerging "agentic economy" raises questions of infrastructure and order. Agents acting on behalf of different principals need ways to identify each other, establish trust, settle transactions, and resolve disputes. Markets populated by fast, interacting, partly opaque systems may also produce unfamiliar dynamics, including coordination effects, cascading errors, and concentration around a few dominant platforms.

This topic investigates how business models, markets, and inter-organizational relationships change when autonomous agents become economic actors. Drawing on information systems, business model research, platform and ecosystem theory, and institutional perspectives, it aims to explain both the opportunities of agentification and the governance problems it creates.

Potential research questions

• How are business models redesigned when autonomous agents act on behalf of customers, suppliers, or the firm itself?
• Which activities in value creation and delivery are being delegated to agents, and which resist delegation?
• How do agent-mediated interactions change customer relationships, brand, and differentiation?
• What forms of trust, identity, contracting, and accountability are needed for transactions between agents of different organizations?
• How do platforms and ecosystems shape the conditions under which agentic business models emerge and scale?
• What market-level risks and unintended dynamics arise when many autonomous agents interact, and how can they be governed?

If you have your own ideas, feel free to reach out too. The questions above only represent initial ideas, but research topics are not limited to this list.

Tasks

• Literature review on agentic AI, business model innovation, and platform ecosystems
• Collect data from interviews, case studies, or surveys
• Analyze data through qualitative methods, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), or quantitative methods
• Discuss findings and derive practical guidelines

Requirements

• Interest in current topics of digital business models, AI technologies, and organizational design
• Interest in creating and publishing high-impact research
• High degree of autonomy and individual responsibility
• Above-average grades or other qualifications
• Structured, reliable and self-motivated work style

Further Information

The topic can be adopted according to your interests. The thesis must be written in English. If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Please send your application including our application form, "Notenauszug" from TUMonline, and CV to alisa.mehler@tum.de. Please note that we can only consider applications with complete documents.