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Andrew McAfee Speaker Profile

An MIT scientist, studies how technological progress changes business, the economy, and society. He is the coauthor with Erik Brynjolfsson of the bestseller The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies and the cofounder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy.

MEET ANDREW MCAFEE

Andrew McAfee studies the ways that information technology (IT) affects businesses and business as a whole. His research investigates how IT changes the way companies perform, organize themselves, and compete. At a higher level, his work also investigates how computerization affects competition, society, the economy, and the workforce.

He and Erik Brynjolfsson are co-authors of the ebook Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. The book brings together a range of data, examples, and research to show that the average US worker is being left behind by advances in technology.

He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” in a spring 2006 Sloan Management Review article to describe the use of Web 2.0 tools and approaches by businesses. He also began blogging at that time, both about Enterprise 2.0 and about his other research. McAfee’s blog is widely read, becoming at times one of the 10,000 most popular in the world (according to Technorati). He also maintains a Facebook profile and Twitter account.

In addition to the blog that is part of this site, McAfee also writes a blog as part of harvardbusiness.org’s “HBR Voices.” His posts are also regularly reprinted at forbes.com.

McAfee’s book on Enterprise 2.0 was published in November 2009 by Harvard Business School Press.

In the July / August 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson published “Investing in the IT that Makes a Competitive Difference,” a summary of their research investigating IT’s links to changes in competition. This work was the first to reveal that competition began to heat up in the US in the mid 1990s —  to become faster paced, more turbulent, and more winner-take-all —  and that this acceleration was greater in industries that spent more on IT.  This research continues, and continues to highlight that technology appears to be significantly reshaping the landscape of competition.

McAfee is the author or co-author of more than 100 articles, case studies and other materials for students and teachers of technology. This work has convinced him that modern information technology is the most powerful tool available to business leaders, yet also the most misunderstood and under-appreciated resource at their disposal.

He has written columns for the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and Canadian Manager, and been a guest on the Charlie Rose show.

In 2008 McAfee was named by the editors of the technical publishing house Ziff-Davis number 38 in their list of the “100 Most Influential People in IT.” He was also named by Baseline magazine to a separate, unranked list of the 50 most influential people in business IT that year. In 2009 he was the only non-executive in the Everything Channel’s group of the 100 most influential executives in the technology industry.

He speaks frequently to both academic and industry audiences, and has taught in executive education programs around the world.

McAfee is currently a principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business in the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was previously a professor at Harvard Business School and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

He received his Doctorate from Harvard Business School, and completed two Master of Science and two Bachelor of Science degrees at MIT.

The keynotes by Andrew McAfee discuss a future in which a high percentage of jobs in the market are taken over by robots. Packed with a wide variety of research and statistics conducted by McAfee himself, the speeches present a fascinating perspective and look at how the current labor market and economy is transforming because of technology. 

McAfee holds an array of impressive degrees including a bachelor's of science in Mechanical Engineering, an MS in Management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and a DBA in Technology and Operations Management from Harvard Business School. He now works as a professor and researcher at MIT.

The keynotes by Andrew McAfee create a new dialogue on the impact and influence of technology in society.

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