Principal Investigator George Westerman
Co-investigator Andrew McAfee
The Center for Digital Business at MIT engages in fundamental research on the effects of digital technology on business and the economy. Previous work by the research team investigated how large firms are using, and benefiting from, new digital technologies. It identified technology and management drivers of digital mastery, and their implications for the performance of firms. The CDB has also done pioneering research on the effects of recent technology advances on workers and the economy. More remains to be learned, however, about the digital organization of the future. Exponential growth in the price/performance of technologies will have immense impacts on the nature of work, the design of organizations, and the shape of industries. What will ubiquitous information do to organization structures? As computers move from replacing manual labor to replacing knowledge work, what will be the implications for workers? How will large incumbent firms compete against networks of new digitally-powered competitors? Answers to these questions are obviously important, yet have been lacking.