Erik Brynjolfsson

Erik Brynjolfsson
At the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium 2013
Citizenship	United States of America
Fields	Information Systems Economics Technological Change
Institutions	MIT Sloan School of Management
Alma mater	Harvard MIT
Notable students	Sinan Aral Lorin M. Hitt Marshall Van Alstyne Shinkyu Yang Michael D. Smith Yu (Jeffrey) Hu Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang
Known for	Productivity paradox The Long Tail Bundling of Information Goods Cyberbalkanization
Notable awards	John D.C. Little Award for Best Paper in Marketing Science

Erik Brynjolfsson (born 1962) is an American academic, and Schussel Family Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy,^[1] Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, known for his contributions to the world of IT Productivity research and work on the economics of information more generally.

Biography

Brynjolfsson earned his BA, magna cum laude, in 1984 and his MS in Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences at Harvard University in 1984. He received a Ph.D. in Managerial Economics in 1991 from the MIT Sloan School of Management.^[2]

Brynjolfsson has served on the faculties of MIT since 1986, Harvard from 1985 to 1995 and Stanford from 1996 to 1998. In 2001 he was appointed the Schussel Family Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He lectures and consults worldwide, and serves on corporate boards. He teaches the popular course 15.567, The Economics of Information: Strategy, Structure, and Pricing, at MIT ^[3] and hosts a related blog Economics of Information. He was also a contributing member to the Winter, 2004 Boston Ski and Sports Club (BSSC) Championship flag football team.

His research has been recognized with nine "best paper" awards by fellow academics, including the John DC Little Award for the best paper in Marketing Science. Brynjolfsson is the founder of two companies and has been awarded five U.S. patents. Along with Andrew McAfee, he was awarded the top prize in the Digital Thinkers category at the Thinkers 50 Gala on November 9, 2015.^[4]

Brynjolfsson is of Icelandic descent.^[5]

Work

Brynjolfsson's research interests focus on the economic impacts of information technology on productivity at both the level of the firm and the economy. He has examined a number of topics, such as intangible assets, information worker productivity, the Long Tail in digital goods, and business process replication.

More recently, in his books The Second Machine Age and Race Against the Machine, Brynjolfsson and his co-author Andrew McAfee have argued that technology is racing ahead, and called for greater efforts to update our skills, organizations and institutions more rapidly.

Information Technology and Productivity

Brynjolfsson wrote an influential review of the "IT Productivity Paradox" and in separate research, documented a clear correlation between IT investment and productivity. His work provides evidence that the use of Information Technology is mostly likely to increase productivity when it is combined with complementary business processes and human capital.

Selected Publications

Computers, Productivity and Organizational Capital

• Brynjolfsson, Erik and McAfee, Andrew (January, 2014) The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, W.W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-23935-5
• Brynjolfsson, Erik and McAfee, Andrew (October 2011) Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. Digital Frontier Press. ISBN 0-9847251-1-3
• Brynjolfsson, Erik and Saunders, Adam (October 2009) Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology is Reshaping the Economy. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-01366-5
• Wu, Lynn and Brynjolfsson, Erik (August 2013) "The Future of Prediction: How Google Searches Foreshadow Housing Prices and Sales". NBER Conference Technological Progress & Productivity Measurement, 2009; WISE, 2009; ICIS, 2009.
• Brynjolfsson, Erik and Hitt, Lorin (June 2003) "Computing Productivity: Firm-level Evidence,Review of Economics and Statistics.
• Brynjolfsson, Erik and Hitt, Lorin (Fall 2000) "Beyond Computation: Information Technology, Organizational Transformation and Business Performance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 23–48.
• Bresnahan, Timothy, Brynjolfsson, Erik and Hitt, Lorin (February, 2002) "Information Technology, Workplace Organization and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm Level Evidence" Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 117, pp. 339–376.
• Brynjolfsson, Erik, Hitt, Lorin and Yang, Shinkyu (2002)"Intangible Assets: Computers and Organizational Capital", Brookings Papers on Economic Activity: Macroeconomics, 137–199.

Bundling and Pricing of Information Goods

• Bakos, Yannis and Brynjolfsson, Erik (December, 1999) "Bundling Information Goods: Pricing, Profits and Efficiency", Management Science, Vol. 45, No. 12, pp. 1613–1630.
• Bakos, Yannis and Brynjolfsson, Erik (January, 2000) "Bundling and Competition on the Internet", Marketing Science, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 63–82.

Internet Commerce and the Long Tail

• Brynjolfsson, Erik, Smith, Michael and Hu, Yu (November, 2003) "Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Variety at Online Booksellers," Management Science, Vol 49, No. 11.
• Brynjolfsson, Erik, Hu, Yu and Rahman, Mohammad (November, 2009) "Battle of the Retail Channels: How Product Selection and Geography Drive Cross-channel Competition", Management Science, Vol. 55, No. 11.
• Brynjolfsson, Erik, Hu, Yu and Simester, Dunan (2006) "Goodbye Pareto Principle, Hello Long Tail: The Effect of Search Costs on the Concentration of Product Sales"

References

External links

• Brynjolfsson's MIT Web Site with links to research papers.
• Economics of Information Blog
• Profile in Business Week, September 29, 2003. ("If e-business had an oracle, Erik Brynjolfsson would be the anointed.")
• Profile in Optimize, October, 2005. (Brynjolfsson ranked second in research study of "most influential academics of business technology")
• Profile in Supply Chain Management, January, 2006.
• CIO Insight Interview, "Expert Voice: Erik Brynjolfsson on Organizational Capital" October, 2001.
• Profile in Informationweek, April 17, 2000. ("When it comes to explaining the relationship between IT and worker productivity—bandwagon jumpers like Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan notwithstanding—the generally acknowledged expert in the field is Erik Brynjolfsson ...")
• Erik Brynjolfsson at TED
  
  • TED Talk on the impact of technical change (TED2013)