Credit: Steve Sauer
Five members of the MIT Sloan community were honored Nov. 18 in London at the Thinkers50 awards, a biennial competition that recognizes business thought leaders from around the world.
MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy fellows Geoffrey Parker, PhD ’98, and Marshall Van Alstyne, PhD ’98, received the Digital Thinking award for their “valuable guidance on how businesses can thrive in the era of platform technology.”
Dubbed the “go-to gurus for platform business models” by Thinkers50, Parker, a professor at Dartmouth College, and Van Alstyne, a professor at Boston University, have written at length about digital platforms, including how they are transforming businesses. They are the authors, along with Sangeet Paul Choudary, of the book “Platform Revolution.”
Jeanne Ross, principal research scientist at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research, was a finalist for the Digital Thinking award for her research about how companies can retool for digital success. Hal Gregersen, the executive director of the MIT Leadership Center, was a finalist for the Leadership Award for his work exploring how asking the right questions leads to leadership and innovation.
In addition to the awards, several MIT Sloan researchers were listed on the Thinkers50 biennial ranking of the top 50 management thinkers. Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and research scientist Andrew McAfee, director and co-director of MIT IDE, were ranked eighth on the list. “Launched into the thought leadership stratosphere in 2014 with “The Second Machine Age,” their work continues to provide a road map for success in a digital economy,” the ranking states.
Gregersen was ranked 16th and Parker and Van Alstyne were 36th on the list.