Erik Brynjolfsson (born 1962) is an American academic, author and inventor. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and a Senior Fellow at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

where he directs th
Digital Economy Lab
at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, with appointments at SIEPR, the Stanford Department of Economics and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also a research associate at the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...

and a best-selling author of several books. He is known for his contributions to the world of IT

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

research and work on the economics of information and the digital economy more generally.

Biography

Erik Brynjolfsson was born to Marguerite Reman Brynjolfsson and Ari Brynjolfsson, a nuclear physicist. He earned his

A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

, ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

'', in 1984 and his S.M. in

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

and decision sciences at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1984. He received a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in Managerial Economics in 1991 from the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

. Brynjolfsson served on the faculty of MIT from 1986 to 2020, where he was a professor at the

and Director of the

MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy The 'MIT Center for Digital Business' is an industry-funded research center headquartered at the MIT Sloan School of Management. MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy In 2013, the Center for Digital Business organized and launched the Institute-wid ...

, and Director of the

MIT Center for Digital Business The 'MIT Center for Digital Business' is an industry-funded research center headquartered at the MIT Sloan School of Management. MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy In 2013, the Center for Digital Business organized and launched the Institute-wid ...

. Previously, he was at Harvard from 1985 to 1995 and

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

from 1996 to 1998. In 2001 he was appointed the Schussel Family Professor of Management at the

. He lectures and consults worldwide, and serves on corporate boards. He taught the popular course 15.567, The Economics of Information: Strategy, Structure, and Pricing, at MIT and hosts a related blog, ''Economics of Information''. In February 2020, Stanford announced that Brynjolfsson would join its faculty in July. 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. Brynjolfsson is of Icelandic descent.

Work

Brynjolfsson's is one of the most widely cited scholars studying the economics of information systems. He was among the first researchers to measure productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. Brynjolfsson has done research on digital commerce, the

Long Tail In statistics and business, a long tail of some probability distribution, distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having many occurrences far from the "head" or central part of the distribution. The distribution could involv ...

, bundling and pricing models, intangible assets and the effects of IT on business strategy,

and performance. More recently, in his books ''

The Second Machine Age ''The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies'' is a 2014 book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee which is a continuation of their book ''Race Against the Machine''. They argue that the Second Ma ...

'' and ''

Race Against the Machine ''Race Against the Machine'' is a non-fiction book from 2011 by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee about the interaction of digital technology, employment and organization. The full title of the book is: ''Race Against the Machine: How the Dig ...

'', Brynjolfsson and his co-author

Andrew McAfee Andrew Paul McAfee (born ), a principal research scientist at MIT, is cofounder and codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He studies how digital technologies are changing the world. Life ...

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

correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...

between IT investment and productivity. His work provides evidence that the use of Information Technology is most likely to increase productivity when it is combined with complementary business processes and human capital.

Measuring the Digital Economy

Working with Avinash Collis and others, Brynjolfsson developed new methods for measuring the digital economy using "massive online choice experiments". The insight from this work is that even when goods like Wikipedia or email have zero price, and therefore may have little or no direct contribution to

GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is ofte ...

as it is conventionally measured, they may still contribute significantly to well-being and consumer surplus. Brynjolfsson's method seeks to measure the consumer surplus from these goods and assess how it changes over time.

References

External links

Brynjolfsson's Web Site
with links to research papers.
The Stanford Digital Economy Lab

''Economics of Information'' Blog
* Profile i

September 29, 2003. ("If e-business had an oracle, Erik Brynjolfsson would be the anointed.") * Profile i
Optimize
October, 2005. (Brynjolfsson ranked second in research study of "most influential academics of business technology") * Profile i

January, 2006.
CIO Insight
Interview, "Expert Voice: Erik Brynjolfsson on Organizational Capital" October, 2001. * Profile i

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 ...") * *
TED Talk on the impact of technical change
(TED2013) {{DEFAULTSORT:Brynjolfsson, Erik 1962 births Living people Harvard University alumni MIT Sloan School of Management alumni MIT Sloan School of Management faculty American people of Icelandic descent Harvard University faculty Stanford University faculty Information systems researchers