Research Affiliate at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Fellow of the Initiative on the Digital Economy and of the MIT Connection Science initiative.
Bio: I retired from IBM in May of 2007 after 37 years with the company, where I was responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments that are critical to the future of the IT industry. I was also responsible for our university relations office and for the IBM Academy of Technology where I served as Chairman of the Board of Governors. I led a number of IBM’s company wide initiatives including the Internet, supercomputing and Linux.
Since retiring from IBM, I’ve been an Adviser on Digital Strategy and Innovation at Citigroup, at HBO and at Mastercard. I’ve been writing a weekly blog, irvingwb.com, since 2005. From April of 2012 until July 2020 I was a guest columnist for the Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal.
I served on and later became co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee from 1997 to 2001, and was a founding member of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council in 1986. I am a former member of University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratories, the Board of Overseers for Fermilab, and BP’s Technology Advisory Council. I am a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Having been born in Cuba and come to the US at the age of 15, I was named 2001 Hispanic Engineer of the Year. I have an M.S. and Ph. D. in physics from the University of Chicago.