This thread on Reddit, which is apparently the official home forum of Ethereum now (reddit makes a poor ongoing discussion forum, what are they thinking?) got a good number of upvotes.
The general gist of it is, "Hey let's just buy up a bunch of companies, including a defunct Bitcoin miner manufacturer that wasn't able to keep up." If the Ethereum community is willing to send upvotes to a post like that, I seriously wonder what DAO voters will decide.
The DAO can't buy anything. Its just a bank account. It can pay contractors at a monthly rate under a profit share agreement. It doesn't run businesses but it could assimilate the manpower and finances create practical incentive. With a network of 4000+ crypto-geeks who are invested, the likelihood of the network effect alone creating a profitable situation is phenomenal.