Economists discovered the firm as a serious object of inquiry only a century ago when Ronald Coase famously asked, why firms exist at all. Firms were benchmarked against markets, which gave us transaction cost economics and the incompleteness of contracts as foundations for the theory of the firm. In effect, firms were reduced to substitutes for markets rather than alternative modes for the organization of socioeconomic relations. NCEs require a different theory of the firm that is aligned with theories of organizations more generally.