Founding Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern (1959) Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.
At MIT, he is also a Professor of Information Technology and a Professor of Work and Organizational Studies. Previously, he was the founder and director of the MIT Center for Coordination Science and one of the two founding co-directors of the MIT Initiative on “Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century.”
Professor Malone teaches classes on organizational design, information technology, and leadership, and his research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology. For example, Professor Malone predicted, in an article published in 1987, many of the major developments in electronic business over the following 25 years, including electronic buying and selling for many kinds of products. Then, in 2004, Professor Malone summarized two decades of his research in his critically acclaimed book, The Future of Work. His newest book, Superminds, appeared in May 2018. Professor Malone has also published over 100 articles, research papers, and book chapters; he is an inventor with 11 patents; and he is the co-editor of four books.
Malone has been a cofounder of four software companies and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. His background includes work as a research scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Ph.D. from Stanford University, an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich, and degrees in applied mathematics, engineering, and psychology.
