Shoshana Zuboff

Leading Thinker on Capitalism and the Consumer

BIG IDEAS

• The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism
  Professor Zuboff explains why today’s business models have reached the limits of their adaptive range. People have changed more than the organizations they depend upon for consumption and employment. Today’s individuals seek control over their lives and meaningful channels for voice and influence. They have moved beyond mass produced goods and services toward new individualized relationships of advocacy and support. As a result, twentieth century “managerial capitalism” is giving way to a new “distributed capitalism” more capable of effectively meeting the needs of today’s new consumers. The chasm that now separates people and organizations is filled with frustration, pain, and mistrust. It is also the opportunity to unleash the next great wave of wealth creation on a global scale. Based on her highly acclaimed book by the same name, this presentation presents a profoundly original framework for exploring these commercial, technological, and social innovations.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (retired), where she joined the faculty in 1981. One of the first tenured women at the Harvard Business School, she earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University and her B.A. in philosophy from the University of Chicago.

Author of the celebrated classic, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988), Professor Zuboff has been called “the true prophet of the information age”.  In the Age of the Smart Machine won instant critical acclaim in both the academic and trade press—including the front page review in the New York Times Book Review—and has long been considered the definitive study of information technology in the workplace.

In 1993, Professor Zuboff founded the executive education program “ODYSSEY: School for the Second Half of Life” at the Harvard Business School. The program addressed the issues of transformation and career renewal at midlife. During 12 years of her teaching and leadership, ODYSSEY became known as the best program of its kind in the world.  She is currently completing a new book that will make the ODYSSEY program available to a wide audience. 

In 2006, strategy+business named Professor Zuboff among the 11 most original business thinkers in the world.  She was featured in 2004 as a “Creative Mind” in strategy+business, described as “a maverick management guru…one of the sharpest most unorthodox thinkers today.”  From 2003 to 2005, Zuboff shared her ideas on the future of business and society in her monthly column “Evolving,” in the magazine Fast Company.  Professor Zuboff has also been featured on CNBC, Reuters International, and the Today Show as well as in Fortune, Inc., BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report, CIO, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and many other news outlets. Boston Magazine voted her one of the “Five Smartest People in Boston.”  She has been heard on more than 200 radio shows, including top coverage on NPR’s Marketplace, TechNation, Sound Money, Morning Edition, BBC, and BBC World Service.

Professor Zuboff has published dozens of articles, essays, book reviews, and cases on the subject of information technology in the workplace, as well as on the history and future of work and management.  Her scholarly monograph “Work in the United States in the Twentieth Century,” appears in the Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century (1996).  Her lectures on “The Information Society” are featured in the Smithsonian’s permanent exhibition on “The Information Age.”  She has served on editorial boards including the Harvard Business Review, the American Prospect, and Organization.  She has been awarded research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health. 

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Shoshana's expertise, and what's ahead on her schedule?

Professor Zuboff lectures, leads seminars, and consults to businesses and governments around the world.  Some of her most recent keynote addresses include The Specialty Schools and Academies Trust (UK), The Exelon Corporation, The Performance Theater (Budapest), The Finnish Academy of Sciences, The University Continuing Education Association, The TechNation Summit, European Consumer Day (Zurich), The Senior Human Resource Managers’ Global Forum, The Knowledge Management Network, The Service Innovation Consortium, The Discovery Companies, Demos (London), The Economist CIO Forum, the CRM Forum, The Sloan Leadership Conference, The Triple Bottom Line, The National Consumer Council (UK), Sogetti (Amsterdam), and General Electric.

Shoshana has delivered major invited addresses at Cambridge University, MIT, Harvard, The London School of Economics, The European Information Systems Society, The Royal Society of Arts , The British Computer Society, The Smithsonian, The American Society for Training and Development, The National Education Association, The American Management Association, and many others.