AI Agent & Copilot Podcast: Thales Teixeira on the Economics of Attention, Demystifying Disruption

In this Special Report episode of the AI Agent & Copilot Podcast, Thales Teixeira, Co-Founder, Decoupling.co, shares his experiences in research and education pertaining to entrepreneurship, the economics of attention, and demystifying disruption.

Key Takeaways

The economics of attention: Teixeira spent about 10 years at the Harvard Business School as a professor. One phase of this he classifies as a continuation of his research as a PhD student which focused on the “economics of attention.” He wrote academic papers, consulted companies, and worked with students on projects involving the idea of trying to measure attention and figuring out how to monetize it. “I was able to show real data that the price of attention was growing much faster than inflation,” he notes.
Causing industry disruptions: “You need to compete for attention with all of the other businesses, not only your competitors,” Teixeira says. “That’s what makes it complicated and expensive.” Organizations have to consider how they’ll disrupt the field they’re in to stay ahead of others in that space. A major driver in many industries is disruptive technologies. While these technologies serve as an underlying enabler to propel industries, organizations are recognizing niche categories that need to be filled, where people want to give attention.
Consumer POV: Businesses that will be successful are recognizing where pain points are and providing a solution to dazzle customers. From his time at Harvard, Teixeira has learned that the startup entrepreneurs have “looked at the potential from the point of view of consumers and they tried to identify where consumers are the most unsatisfied,” as suggested in his book, “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain.” Instead of building a whole business around the key pain points, they’ve only built a sliver of the business to solve that problem. Then, other solutions will grow from that.

AI Agent & Copilot Summit is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents. Building on its 2025 success, the 2026 event takes place March 17-19 in San Diego. Get more details.

Educating on business: With origins in academics, Teixeira’s first goal was to educate, and he’s done so through his book, “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain.” “I felt that many of our students felt like entrepreneurship was too far removed, that they had to have a brilliant idea before they started working on it.” However, that’s far removed from the actual truth. He explained to his students how many businesses came about and the evolution that many organizations experienced before becoming successful.
Entrepreneurship: It’s about identifying where to start and mapping out the activities that your prospect customer does. “Once you map out all these activities in the customer’s value chain, you identify where they’re most unsatisfied, that one activity you can steal from them.”
Demystifying disruption: Decoupling.co demystifies disruption as a startup entrepreneur. “It’s not supposed to be this gigantic idea that you have that will change the world,” he says. “You have to start small.” He emphasizes three key points:
- Disruption can be engineered through a methodical process.
- The disruptor is not the startup. It’s not the technology. It’s the customer.
- The way you come up with a business is really thinking about the customer value chain and thinking about decoupling an activity and building a business model that allows you to grow out.