Faculty & Research

Thomas W. Malone

Patrick J. McGovern (1959) Professor of Management
Professor of Information Technology
Director of MIT Center for Collective Intelligence

Biography | Publications

Thomas W. Malone is the founder and director of the MIT Center for Coordination Science and was one of the two founding codirectors of the MIT Initiative on "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century." Malone teaches classes on leadership and information technology, and his research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology.

In an article published in 1987, Malone predicted many of the major developments in electronic business over the last decade: electronic buying and selling, electronic markets for many kinds of products, "outsourcing" of non-core functions in a firm, and the use of intelligent agents for commerce. The past two decades of Professor Malone's research are summarized in his book, The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life (Harvard Business School Press, 2004).

Malone is an inventor with 11 patents. He has also published more than 50 articles, research papers, and book chapters along with co-editing three books: Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology (Erlbaum, 2001), Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2003), and Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook (MIT Press, 2003). Malone has been a co-founder of three software companies and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. He speaks frequently for business audiences around the world and has been quoted in numerous publications such as Fortune, New York Times, and Wired. Before joining the MIT faculty in 1983, Malone was a research scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where his research involved designing educational software and office information systems.

Web Site: http://ccs.mit.edu/Tom.html