About
Futurist, author, researcher, advisor.
I’m editor-in-chief at Work Futures, a cabal of futurists exploring the shifting realities of work and our place in it. Likewise, I’m founding conspirator at Another Voice, rethinking research for the new economy with a confederation of practitioners and theorists.
My approach is to combine research, analytic and conjectural frameworks, and futures scenarios and other tools to help clients answer their most strategic questions.
In 2015 I was identified as one of the leading work futurists, in several reports. I serve on Microsoft’s future of work advisory board, and the Pew Research Center advisory group on robotics and automation.
Formerly, I was head of research, research director, and research lead at Gigaom over a six year period. I was president of the blog pioneer Corante, in 2004–2005. Before that I was a software researcher/adjunct professor for ten years, an accidental entrepreneur, and I’ve worked for numerous journals and analyst firms. I’ve consulted with hundreds of companies over the past decades, including Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Dell.
A poem I wrote, The world that Steve’s hands built, was published in Poetry and Business in 2016.
I liking naming things. I coined ‘hashtag’ (2007), ‘publicy’ (2009), ‘work management’ (2007), ‘edgling’ (2006), and ‘social tools’ (1999).
I’ve spoken at dozens of conferences and events worldwide, including Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, GigaOM Net:Work, Reboot, Next, Mesh, Shift, Lift, SIBOS, Defrag, SxSW, SocialNow, and various TEDx events. In 2017, hear me at PR360 (London), Digital Workplace Experience (Chicago), and Vivatech (Paris).
Master of Science in Computer Science, Boston University; Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Natural Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, with honors, magna cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa.
I have over 250 stitches in my head, mostly from brain surgery, and none from karate, although I have black belt in Shitō-ryū.
Some representative writing:
- Millennials and the leadership gap — workfutures.io
- The Rise of Work Chat Anti-Hype — workfutures.io
- What Will a Corporation Look Like in 2050? — Backchannel — Medium
- In Praise Of (A Little) Mess: Be (A Little) Scruffy — Unclutterer
- We’ve Entered The Volatile Postnormal Stage Of History — Fast Company
- The False Question of Attention Economics — stoweboyd.com
- Esko Kilpi on the Architecture of Work — workfutures.io — Medium
