Larry Downes

With a unique perspective on digital life, Larry Downes is the ideal guide for building strategy in a world of constant disruption caused by the influx of information technology. Downes, an expert on the intersection of innovation, strategy and law, was the first to identify what he calls “The Law of Disruption”, where technology sprints ahead, social, economic, and legal systems struggle to keep up. Today, innovation is colliding with increased frequency into the legal systems optimized for an earlier age. With technology as the driving force for growth in almost every industry, anyone who has regular interactions with online customers has an interest in addressing these issues. What if your organization is sued over patents? What if your online users stage a revolt over terms of service? And what happens if governments in far-off countries change regulations that affect your interactions with suppliers and customers online?

Downes explains how lawyers and business strategists can work together to shape an organization’s online presence, anticipate customer needs, and foresee changes in regulation. More and more Americans are living their lives online, and the digital marketplace can be a rewarding and profitable place for an organization to grow –if lawyers and customers can keep better pace with the technology curve. Larry Downes has an accessible style gleaned from his background as a consultant, teacher and bestselling author of Unleashing the Killer App. His new book The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces that Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age uses stories from leading companies such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google to show how lawyers and business strategists can work together to achieve competitive advantage in a rapidly-changing world.

Strategy for Success.  Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance was a critical and commercial success. It has sold nearly 200,000 copies and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five most important books ever published on business and technology. His writing appears regularly on Slate and CNET, and his ideas have been featured in USA Today, Harvard Business Review, Inc., Wired, Strategy & Leadership, CIO, the American Scholar, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. He was a columnist for both The Industry Standard and CIO Insight. Downes has become a sought-after speaker on topical issues like net neutrality, the Google books deal, cybercrime and security, and increasingly-vocal calls for patent and copyright reform.

Internet & Society. Downes has held faculty appointments at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Northwestern University School of Law, and the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where he taught courses on corporate strategy and information law. He is currently a nonresident fellow with the Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society. He is also a partner with the Bell-Mason Group, which works with Global 1000 corporations, providing corporate venturing methodologies, tools, techniques, and support that accelerate corporate innovation and venturing programs.