People

The two people building Theory A and the Collections that carry it.

Agency
Systems
Practice

Emily Liddle

Co-Founder, TheoryA.ai

Organizational agency is a capacity an organization has to be deliberately designed to create, and leaders who ask for it without changing the design rarely see it arrive.

I began my career in politics because I was troubled by how little agency most people felt over the systems that shaped their lives, and holding office was never the goal. That question eventually pulled me toward technology and the workplace, where I have spent more than two decades helping organizations respond to fundamental shifts in how work gets done and value is created.

I have built new markets, consulting practices, methodologies, and client offerings across the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific, working repeatedly at moments of transition where emerging ideas needed to move into practice. The ideas I care most about are the ones that reach how an organization actually operates day to day, because that is where change either holds or fades.

At TheoryA.ai, I am the architect of the firm's model, including Digital Intelligence, the Collections structure, and the advisory approach that brings Theory A to life. I am co-author of the Theory A manifesto and principles and the creator of the Design for Agency Collection.

Outside of this work, I am a certified sommelier with a long-held dream of one day opening a small, carefully curated wine shop. It is a dream about curation, judgment, and the belief that the best things do not need to be complicated to be extraordinary.

Emily Liddle

Experience
Perspective
Practice

Jim Scully

Co-Founder, TheoryA.ai

The organizations that create the most value with AI will not simply automate existing work. They will redesign the enterprise around what intelligence now makes possible.

I have been watching technology reshape work since before keyboards existed. Across nearly five decades, I have had a front-row seat to every major wave: mainframes, personal computers, client-server systems, enterprise platforms, the internet, cloud, automation, analytics, and now AI. That vantage point has convinced me that what is happening now is not simply the biggest technology transformation in workplace history. It is as significant as all prior transformations combined.

My work begins from a simple premise: AI transformation is not a technology implementation. It is a redesign of how work is organized, how decisions are made, and how human and artificial agency work together. I help leaders understand those deeper implications and design organizations capable of acting on them.

I am the creator of The AI Enterprise and AI Native Shared Services Collections, and co-author of the Theory A manifesto and principles.

When I am not thinking about the future of organizations, I am building one of a different kind. My backyard farm is a work in progress toward full sustainability, and it keeps me honest about what it actually takes to design a system that compounds over time.

Jim Scully
Work With Us

If the questions behind Theory A are live in your organization, we would like to hear about it.

We are taking a small number of advisory conversations.