ANDREW MCAFEE
Award-winning and globally recognized researcher, writer, and thinker on technological progress and its impact on business and society.
Co-founder and Co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Andrew McAfee
Andrew is an Award-Winning, Globally Acclaimed Researcher, Writer and Thinker About Technological Progress and the Changes It Brings; Evidence-Driven Optimist and Practical Theorist Investigating Sources of Growth and Competitive Differentiation; He is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; Principal Research Scientist, MIT Sloan School of Management; Inaugural Visiting Fellow, Google Technology and Society; 6x Thinkers50 Honoree; New York Times Bestselling Co-Author, “Machine, Platform, Crowd” who he wrote with Erik Brynjolfsson He also co-authored “The Second Machine Age”; “More From Less” and “The Geek Way”
For Andrew’s full Bio see below: –
TOPICS:
How to Thrive in the Age of AI
AI is the most powerful technology since the Industrial Revolution. It’s already reshaping industries, companies and competition itself, and the biggest upheavals are still to come. So what’s going to separate the disruptors from the disrupted in the Age of AI? In this talk, Andrew McAfee, Ph.D. explains that in order to succeed and gain competitive advantage with this extraordinary technology, organizations need to walk away from much of the conventional wisdom of the Industrial Era. And do what instead? Embrace what he calls the “geek way:” a new set of practices and philosophies incubated in Silicon Valley and now quickly spreading throughout the economy. The Geek Way yields modular, iterative, responsive, egalitarian, data-driven, fault-tolerant organizations — exactly the kind that succeed at putting powerful new tools to work.
The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth: Competition and Value Creation in the Age of AI
In the 21st century so far, more than 60% of all of America’s total stock market gains have come from companies inside the “15×75 box:” founded within 15 miles of Palo Alto since 1975. What’s going on inside this box? Part of the answer, of course, is that it’s the home of the U.S. high-tech industry, which has produced a lot of extraordinarily valuable companies. But the rest of the answer is much more interesting. In this talk, Andrew McAfee, Ph.D. will describe how the most profound innovation to come out of the 15-by-75 box isn’t hardware or software; it’s instead a new and improved way to run a company, in any industry. Companies practicing this “geek way” have already disrupted industries as diverse as automaking, entertainment and space exploration. And as McAfee reveals, they’re just getting started.
The Future of Work — and the Workforce — in the Age of AI
AI is extraordinarily powerful and flexible – it’s the ultimate general-purpose technology. Is it finally going to bring us into a jobless future of highly automated companies? In this talk, Andrew McAfee, Ph.D. will explain why this particular future isn’t coming anytime soon, and in fact, how many of the skills that people already have are going to become even more powerful and valuable in the age of AI. There’s a lot of upskilling, reskilling and work redesign ahead of us, but there are also a lot of jobs that need to be done, by people. McAfee reveals how successful companies will combine digital and human capabilities. AI won’t replace all the workers, but people who know how to work with AI will replace those who don’t.
America’s Tech Advantage, and How to Keep It
America’s high-tech sector is the crown jewel of its economy. No other country comes close to matching our prowess with hardware and software, and our ability to commercialize them around the world. But our advantage runs even deeper, because America has upgraded the most powerful technology of them all: the company itself. Over the course of the 21st century so far, a cluster of builders, innovators and founders has walked away from much of the conventional wisdom of the Industrial Era. In this talk, Andrew McAfee, Ph.D. will describe how they came up with the “geek way:” a new set of practices and philosophies incubated in Silicon Valley and now quickly spreading throughout the economy. The Geek Way yields modular, iterative, responsive, egalitarian, data-driven, fault-tolerant organizations — exactly the kind that succeed in the turbulent environment of today. And tomorrow.
EU Competitiveness: It’s Even Worse Than It Looks
In 2024, Mario Draghi released a bombshell report on EU competitiveness that made clear the region is falling behind in productivity and innovation. As Andrew McAfee, Ph.D. pointed out at the time, though, the Draghi report actually understated the problem. McAfee created a visualization comparing the size of the U.S. and EU tech sectors; it made clear the enormous gap between the two, and went viral. In this talk, McAfee expands the conversation to show that because Europe is falling behind in tech, it’s also lagging in autos, aerospace and other significant sectors for the EU. His message is that unless Europe makes significant changes in its approaches to regulation and entrepreneurship, it will fall farther behind.
Ensure Long-term Growth by Digitally Transforming Your Operating Model
The key factor that drives the success of tech giants like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Uber lies in their ability to leverage a digital operating model. Traditional businesses are getting left behind as these digital giants take over the economy, says MIT digital economist and data scientist Andrew McAfee, Ph.D., co-founder of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. In this talk, he explains why traditional companies must digitally transform their business if they want to survive in the new economy, how they can successfully make the transition, and what they need to do to prepare their workforce for the future.
Uncovering Corporate Dysfunction: What Smart Companies Are Doing Differently
Why do some businesses fail? What factors within your organization are creating bad habits and how do you break them? Do stock values reflect the real value of a company? MIT principal scientist and digital economist Andrew McAfee, Ph.D. studies such dynamics within organizations, economies and industries and uses his research to help leaders identify and fix problems. In this talk, he shows participants how to leave behind inefficient and outdated systems and how to shape new business models that can leverage emerging opportunities for growth.
Building Business While Minding the Environment
Growth does not have to happen at the expense of the environment, says MIT principal scientist and digital economist Andrew McAfee, Ph.D. He and his research team have collected massive amounts of data showing how technology has contributed to increased economic growth and decreased use of energy and natural resources since the 1970s. In this talk, he shares that data and offers up smart strategies for driving profits while taking less from the earth. In the process, participants get a sneak peek at emerging trends and technologies that will help them strike a balance between profit and purpose going forward. They also learn how to understand and address systemic problems within an organization or at the public policy level with solutions McAfee continues to uncover in his research.
BIOGRAPHY
As the pace of technological advancement increases every day, how can organizations apply a leadership stance that will prime their business to evolve and leverage emerging technology to supercharge innovation and bypass competitors?
For more than a quarter century, MIT principal research scientist and Google Technology and Society’s inaugural visiting fellow Andrew McAfee, Ph.D. has been studying how digital technologies like artificial intelligence change the world. His in-depth research on modern, tech-heavy firms – especially those in Silicon Valley – revealed a trend: these companies created cultures that helped them harness, adapt to and profit from emerging technology faster and more successfully than their competitors. He dubbed this agile, high-tech culture “The Geek Way.”
In his latest book, “The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results” (Little, Brown and Company, November 2023), McAfee investigates what the geeks are doing differently and why it works so well. Geek companies, he says, are much more freewheeling, fast-moving, evidence-driven, egalitarian, argumentative and autonomous than their Industrial Era predecessors. As a result, they are standout performers and fierce rivals, disrupting industry after industry – and they’re just getting started.
Though a lot of geek companies are tech firms based in northern California, McAfee says “geek” is not a synonym for “high tech” or “Silicon Valley.” Instead, it’s a label for a company that consistently follows four norms: science, ownership, speed and openness. “The Geek Way” explains why those norms work so well, how the geeks put them into practice and how any company can get geekier.
“Traditionally, it seemed like there was always a tradeoff in business. A company might be innovative but struggle with execution or agility. They’d rarely be good at all three,” says McAfee, co-founder of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. “At these ‘geek’ companies, those tradeoffs have disappeared. They are consistently good in all three areas. As a result, competitive battles between geek and non-geek companies really aren’t fair fights. In my book, I look at how and why that is and how any company can adopt geek cultures so they can successfully execute on their missions and not get left behind.”
The AI Advantage of Geek Companies
McAfee also points out that geek companies are better prepared to take advantage of emerging technologies like generative AI and offers organizations deeply researched insights into the technology, including how to capitalize on generative AI and realize its benefits while limiting its risks.
“This is an incredibly powerful technology and it’s naïve to think that because it’s easy to access that it’s going to be a competitive leveler – it’s the opposite.” McAfee explains. “Generative AI is going to further differentiate the companies that are set up to succeed with technology from those that aren’t.”
According to McAfee, the hard part is being able to change a business to actually take advantage of this transformative technology. That, he explains, is what the geeks are good at.
A technology optimist and an expert on human-machine interaction and the future of work, McAfee has been shining a bright light on the far-reaching impact of technology since his first book, 2009’s “Enterprise 2.0”. In 2011 he and co-author Erik Brynjolfsson released their paradigm-shifting book “Race Against the Machine.” Their next two books, The New York Times bestsellers “The Second Machine Age“ (2014) and “Machine, Platform, Crowd” (2017), expanded on the theme of how tech progress was reshaping societies, industries and businesses. In 2019, McAfee went solo with his pessimist-defying book “More From Less” in which he shares profound examples of economic and environmental progress driven by a combination of powerful technologies, economic freedom, public pressure and smart regulation and policy.
As a speaker and advisor, McAfee offers organizations in every industry data-driven insights into existing and emerging tech trends. His work is particularly valuable to decision makers and innovators at financial institutions, manufacturers, health care organizations and government agencies, and to firms interested in emerging technologies that can streamline operations, enhance innovation and offer a competitive edge.
“A century ago, factories were in the process of switching over from steam to electric power,” explains McAfee in the opening of “The Geek Way.” “This transition took a while, but it was inevitable because electricity was simply better along every dimension. Something similar is going on now. Geek companies are simultaneously better at innovation, execution and agility than their predecessors, and we can even show evidence that they’re taking over.”