Frank Nagle

Frank Nagle is a Research Scientist at the Initiative on the Digital Economy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Advising Chief Economist at The Linux Foundation. Dr. Nagle studies how competitors can collaborate on the creation of core technologies, while still competing on the products and services built on top of them – especially in the context of artificial intelligence. His research falls into the broader categories of the future of work, the economics of IT, and digital transformation. His work frequently explores the domains of open source software, crowdsourcing, free digital goods, cybersecurity, and generating strategic predictions from unstructured big data. Dr. Nagle’s work has been published in numerous academic journals including Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy, Strategic Management Review, and Academy of Management Annals as well as in the practitioner-oriented publications Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Brookings Institution TechStream. He has won awards and grants from AOM, NBER, SMS, INFORMS, EURAM, the Sloan Foundation, and the Linux Foundation.

Dr. Nagle serves on the advisory board at Nexleaf Analytics and Alphamatician and advises other big data analytics startups. He has advised the OECD Working Party on Innovation and Technology Policy and was on the European Commission/ Open Forum Europe Board of Experts for the Impact of Open Source on Technological Independence, Competitiveness, and Innovation in Europe. He has consulted for The World Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department, the Social Security Administration, and various companies in the technology, defense, and energy sectors. He is currently a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Prior to his academic career, Frank worked at a number of startups and large companies in the information security and technology consulting industries. In these roles, he researched a variety of topics related to social network privacy and the economics of IT, conducted cybersecurity assessments and breach investigations, and developed and taught a two-week course that all FBI cyber agents must pass before entering the field.

Prior to MIT, Frank was an assistant professor in the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School (HBS), where he was also the co-director of the HBS/Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative and a faculty affiliate of the Digital, Data and Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard, the Managing the Future of Work Project, and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH). Before HBS, he was an assistant professor in the Management & Organization Department at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, where he also served as co-director of Marshall Digitopolis, and as a faculty affiliate of the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication. Frank earned his DBA in Technology and Operations Management from Harvard Business School. He also earned a BS and MS in Computer Science from Georgetown University and an MS in International Business Economics from City University, London.

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