Thinkers whose frameworks illuminate this section.
Henderson's framework on architectural innovation is directly in dialogue with Christensen's disruptive innovation theory — they share the puzzle of incumbent failure but explain it through different mechanisms. Henderson adds the architectural dimension that Christensen's sustaining/disruptive axis cannot capture.
Henderson's architectural innovation framework is both indebted to and a refinement of Schumpeter's creative destruction. Where Schumpeter saw gales of destruction, Henderson identifies specific structural mechanisms — the encoding of architectural knowledge — that explain why the gales destroy incumbents.
Simon's bounded rationality is Henderson's cognitive foundation. Organizations cannot process architectural signals because their structures are designed for component-level information processing — a direct application of Simon's insight that cognition is shaped by the structures that organize it.
March's exploration-exploitation framework illuminates why firms fail at architectural transitions: their exploitation-focused structures cannot generate the exploratory engagement that new architectural knowledge requires. Henderson builds directly on March's organizational learning insights.
Ostrom's work on governing the commons is the institutional economics foundation for Henderson's prescription for collective AI governance. The Montreal Protocol and Factory Acts success cases follow exactly the polycentric governance logic Ostrom developed for natural resource commons.
Zuboff's surveillance capitalism diagnosis maps onto Henderson's architectural analysis: when AI is deployed within an extractive architecture, it amplifies extraction at a scale and speed that makes Zuboff's behavioral modification thesis concrete and urgent.
Mazzucato's entrepreneurial state argument complements Henderson's collective-action prescription: public institutional investment is required to create the conditions under which private AI deployment serves broad purposes rather than extractive ones.
Weick's sensemaking framework explains the cognitive dimension of architectural blindness: organizations enact their environments through their structures, which is why firms with deep architectural knowledge in the old paradigm cannot perceive the new one without deliberate restructuring.
Olson's logic of collective action is the economic foundation for Henderson's free-rider diagnosis: responsible AI deployment is collectively rational but individually irrational without institutional coordination, precisely the collective action failure Olson analyzed across political and economic institutions.
Henderson's case for capitalism worth amplifying is a direct engagement with Smith's invisible hand thesis — she argues that the hand works only when externalities are internalized and time horizons are adequate, conditions that AI-era capitalism systematically violates.
Sen's capabilities approach provides the normative foundation that Henderson's structural analysis needs: the question of what capitalism is worth amplifying is ultimately a question about which human capabilities the system should expand, not merely which efficiencies it should optimize.
Follett's early twentieth-century work on relational power and organizational integration anticipates Henderson's ecosystem framework — the insight that organizational capability resides in relationships between people rather than in people as isolated components predates Henderson's formal analysis by a century.
