AUTHORS

Shoshana Zuboff

In 1994 Professor Zuboff began to question the vision of the progressive corporation espoused in most management literature, including her earlier work. She took time out from teaching and publishing for a prolonged period of study and reflection. That began a decade-long intellectual journey from which she concluded that today's business models based on twentieth century “managerial capitalism” have reached the limits of their adaptive range. Once the engines of wealth creation, they have turned into its impediments. The society of the twenty-first century requires a new approach to commerce based on a new "distributed capitalism."

These insights led to Professor Zuboff’s most recent book, The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism, co-authored with her husband, former Chief Executive Jim Maxmin, and published by Viking. This far-reaching multi-disciplinary work is the result of a decade-long research effort to revisit the roots of today’s corporate ills. It concludes that people have changed more than the businesses that serve and employ them. Today’s individuals are seeking control over their lives and meaningful channels for voice and influence. They have moved beyond mass produced goods and services to individualized needs for advocacy and support. They are frustrated by an organizational world still fitted out for the old mass order. The chasm that now separates the new individuals from the old organizations is filled with frustration, pain, mistrust, and outrage. But, these new markets for personal control are also an opportunity to unleash the next great wave of wealth creation, capable of making the twenty-first century even more prosperous than the twentieth. The Support Economy challenges entrepreneurs and corporate visionaries to forge a new approach to commerce aimed at enabling individuals to live life as they choose.

The Support Economy has received ardent reviews around the world. It was selected by Strategy+Business as one of the top ten business books of 2003 and ranked number one in the “Values” category. Business Week named it the “number one idea” in its special issue on “Twenty Five Ideas for a Changing World”. In its special anniversary issue on entrepreneurship, Inc. described The Support Economy as “the new new thing”. The book has also been featured in dozens of other magazines and newspapers including the Economist, Fast Company, the Financial Times, the Times of London, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and Across the Board (The Conference Board). It has garnered rave reviews in Germany, Italy, India, China, Brazil, Croatia, Japan, and South Korea. The Support Economy has been endorsed by many prominent business leaders and social thinkers including former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich; George Fisher, retired Chairman and CEO of Eastman Kodak Company, former Chairman of Motorola, and Chairman of the National Academy of Engineering; former Senator Bill Bradley; and Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership.

Author of the celebrated classic In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988), Zuboff has been called “the true prophet of the information age”. In the Age of the Smart Machine won instant critical acclaim in both the academic and trade press—including the front page review in the New York Times Book Review-- and is now considered the definitive study of information technology in the workplace. In 1993, Professor Zuboff founded the executive education program “ODYSSEY: School for the Second Half of Life” at the Harvard Business School. The program addressed the issues of transformation and career renewal at midlife. Under ten years of her teaching and leadership, ODYSSEY became known as the best program of its kind in the world. She is presently completing a new book on that subject called Your Odyssey: Pioneering the New Adulthood. From 2003 to 2005, Zuboff shared her ideas on the future of business and society in her monthly column “Evolving”, in the magazine Fast Company.

In 2006, strategy+business named Professor Zuboff among the eleven most original business thinkers in the world. She was featured in 2004 as a “Creative Mind” in strategy+business, described as “a maverick management guru…one of the sharpest most unorthodox thinkers today.” Professor Zuboff has also been featured on CNBC, Reuters International, and the Today Show as well as in Fortune, Inc., Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, CIO, The New York Times, The Financial Times, and many other news outlets. Bostonia Magazine voted her one of the “Five Smartest People in Boston”. She has been heard on over 200 radio shows, including top coverage on NPR’s Marketplace, TechNation, Sound Money, Morning Edition, BBC, and BBC World Service.

Professor Zuboff has published dozens of articles, essays, book reviews, and cases on the subject of information technology in the workplace, as well as on the history and future of work and management. Her scholarly monograph “Work in the United States in the Twentieth Century,” appears in the Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century (1996). Her lectures on “The Information Society” are featured in the Smithsonian’s permanent exhibition on “The Information Age”. She has served on editorial boards including the Harvard Business Review, the American Prospect, and Organization. She has been awarded research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Professor Zuboff lectures, leads seminars, and consults to businesses and governments around the world. Some of her most recent keynotes include The Specialty Schools and Academies Trust (UK), The Exelon Corporation, The Performance Theater (Budapest), The Finnish Academy of Sciences, The University Continuing Education Association, The TechNation Summit, European Consumer Day (Zurich), The Senior Human Resource Managers’ Global Forum, The Knowledge Management Network, The Service Innovation Consortium, The Discovery Companies, , The Economist CIO Forum, the CRM Forum, The Sloan Leadership Conference, The Triple Bottom Line, The National Consumer Council (UK), Sogetti (Amsterdam), and General Electric.

Shoshana Zuboff has delivered major invited addresses at Cambridge University, MIT, Harvard, The London School of Economics, The European Information Systems Society, The Royal Society of Arts , The British Computer Society, The Smithsonian, The American Society for Training and Development, The National Education Association, The American Management Association, and many others.

Professor Zuboff lives with her husband, Jim Maxmin, and their two children on a fresh water farm in mid-coast Maine.

Jim Maxmin

Dr. Maxmin is co- author of The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals And The Next Episode Of Capitalism (www.thesupporteconomy.com) with his wife, Shoshana Zuboff -- the Charles Edward Wilson Professor at the Harvard Business School. He has been featured in newspapers, magazines, radio and TV, including Fast Company, Business Week, The Financial Times, and The Economist. He speaks at major conferences throughout the world. Drawing on his experiences as a CEO and turnaround specialist, he discusses the shift to a support economy and a new model of "distributed capitalism". He focuses on their implications for leadership, strategy, investment, governance and technology. Dr Maxmin and Professor Zuboff often do joint seminars and have held "conversations" about the support economy and the future of business with the boards and senior management of companies around the globe. Each session is tailored to the unique requirements of the audience.

Jim Maxmin was educated at Grinnell College, Cambridge University, and received his Ph.D. from King's College, London. He started his career with Unilever PLC as a graduate trainee and worked in Lever Brothers Ltd. He joined Volvo UK as Marketing Director and become CEO and joint Chairman at age 34. He developed the UK into Volvo's most profitable market in the world over a seven-year period. During that time he increased car sales by 800% from 7,000 to 62,000 annually. He joined Thorn EMI PLC as a main board Director. As the CEO and Chairman of Thorn Home Electronics International, he created a business with turnover of over $3bn and 35,000 employees worldwide. He became CEO of Laura Ashley PLC in 1991, successfully returning the company to profitability by 1994. At Laura Ashley, he launched a major strategic alliance with Federal Express that is the subject of six Harvard Business School case studies. He left Laura Ashley in 1994, due to disagreements with the Ashley family over strategy and investments. He then founded a private investment company that grew to twenty-four active investments. In1999, he became Advisory Director of the investment bank Mast Global Ltd.

Dr Maxmin is married to Shoshana Zuboff – author of In the Age of the Smart Machine and The Support Economy. He has six children. He and his family live in Maine on a freshwater farm, as well as in London.