Robert Laubacher
Research Scientist
Center for Collective Intelligence
MIT Sloan School of Management
3 Cambridge Center NE20-336
Cambridge, MA 02142
617 253 0526
rjl@mit.edu

I came to MIT to join the Initiative on Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. My work with the Initiative looked at how information technology was transforming business organizations and how those changes were reshaping the employment contract. I’ve published articles based on this research in academic venues and in Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times and Boston Globe. I’ve been quoted or ideas from this work —such as e-lancing and the prospects for 21st century guilds—have been featured in pieces on National Public Radio and in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company. And I co-edited, with Thomas Malone and Michael Scott Morton, a collection of articles based on this research, Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2003). 

Since then, my work has focused in two primary areas: examining the mechanisms by which information technology reshapes business processes and generates organizational benefits; and links between the structure of social networks—both face-to-face and electronically-enabled—and the performance of work groups.

I’ve taught MIT classes and organized and led numerous workshops for corporate research sponsors. Several of these workshops have involved the use of scenario planning to help companies think about the potential future evolution of their industry and their organization.

Prior to coming to MIT, I was with JSA International, a strategy consulting firm that assisted Global 1000 firms with market/competitive positioning and partner/acquisition searches. JSA primarily served European and U.S. corporations active in high technology industries. While I was at JSA, it was acquired by the Management Consulting Services group of EDS, and EDS’s consulting organization subsequently merged with A.T. Kearney.

Before working as a consultant, I was head researcher for The Prize, a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the international oil industry that served as the basis for a six-part PBS series. I was also a tutor at Harvard College and a case writer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

During my time at MIT, I was Executive Producer of Home Before Dark, which was named best American independent film at the 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival and was critically acclaimed in Variety, the New York Times and Boston Globe, and numerous other media outlets. After its U.S. theatrical release, Home Before Dark aired on Showtime, WGBH, and television stations in over 20 foreign countries. I subsequently was Executive Producer of another independent feature film, American Wake (2003). I was also author of Lens on the Bay State (Alliance of Independent Motion Media, 2006), a study of the recent history and future prospects of Massachusetts film production industry.

I have an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in American Studies, an interdisciplinary program involving work in history, economics, social anthropology, literature, and art history. And I have a Master’s Degree in Modern History from Harvard, where I completed doctoral coursework and qualifying exams.

Books, articles, book chapters, working papers, and conference presentations
· Francesca Grippa, Antonio Zilli, Robert Laubacher, and Peter Gloor. E-mail May Not Reflect the Social Network. North American Association for Computational Social and Organizational Science, South Bend, IN, June 2006.
· Robert Laubacher and John Quimby. Fit dependencies: Theory and tools for enabling SME collaboration. Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, 2006.
· Robert Laubacher, S. P. Kothari, Thomas W. Malone and S.P. Kothari. What is RFID Worth to Your Company? Measuring Performance at the Activity Level. MIT Center for Coordination Science Working Paper, 2005. 
· Peter Gloor, Robert Laubacher, Yan Zhao and Scott Dynes. Temporal Visualization and Analysis of Social Networks. North American Association for Computational Social and Organizational Science Conference, 2004.
· Peter Gloor, Robert Laubacher, Yan Zhao, Scott Dynes and Gregor Schrott. Trying to Correlate Temporal Communication Patterns of Online Communities with Innovation. Presentation at Sunbelt, Social Networks Analysis Conference, 2004.
· Peter Gloor, Robert Laubacher and Yan Zhao. Visualization of Communication Patterns in Collaborative Innovation Networks: Analysis of some W3C working groups. ACM CKIM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, 2003.
· Peter Gloor, Robert Laubacher and Yan Zhao. Visualization of Interaction Patterns in Collaborative Knowledge Networks for Medical Applications, HCII, 2003.
· Robert Laubacher, John Quimby, Thierry Bouron, Wilson Lau, Yanming Li and Siham Sinaceur. Modeling and Developing Process-Centric Virtual Enterprises with Web-Services. IDPT Special Session, 2003. 
· Thomas W. Malone, Robert Laubacher, Michael S. Scott Morton, eds. Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. MIT Press, 2003. 
· Robert Laubacher and Thomas W. Malone. Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century, chapter 1 of Malone, Laubahcer, and Scott Morton, eds. Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. MIT Press, 2003.
· Robert Laubacher and Thomas W. Malone. Temporary assignments and a permanent home: A case study in the transition to project-based organizational practices. MIT Center for Coordination Science Working Paper #220, December 2002.
· Robert Laubacher. Working in the 21st century virtual corporation. Working Visions International Employment Futures Conference, Perth, Australia, November 2001.
· Robert Laubacher and Thomas Malone. Retreat of the Firm and the Rise of Guilds: The Employment Relationship in an Age of Virtual Business. MIT 21st Century Initiative Working Paper #033, August 2000. Abridged version appears as chapter 16 in Malone, Laubacher, and Scott Morton, eds. Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. MIT Press, 2003.
· Robert Laubacher. New Forms of Labor—Working in Virtual Corporations. Proceedings of World Engineers' Convention:  The Future of Work, June 2000.
· Robert Laubacher. 21st century organizations: Dawn of the e-lance economy. In GfA/Expo 2000, Zukunft der Arbeit in Europa: Gestaltung betrieblicher Veraenderungsprozesse, Dortmund, Germany: GfA Press, October 1999.
· Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher. How Will Work Change? E-Lancers, Empowerment and Guilds. In The Promise of Global Networks: Annual Review of the Institute for Information Studies, Queenstown, MD: Aspen Institute, 1999.
· Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher. All change for the e-lance economy. Financial Times, March 1, 1999.
· Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher. The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy. Harvard Business Review, Sept-Oct 1998. Also appears as chapter 5 of Malone, Laubacher, and Scott Morton, eds. Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. MIT Press, 2003.
· Robert Laubacher and Thomas Malone. Flexible Work Arrangements and 21st Century Worker’s Guilds. MIT 21st Century Initiative Working Paper, October 1997.
· Robert Laubacher, Thomas Malone and the MIT Scenario Working Group. Two Scenarios for 21st Century Organizations: Shifting Networks of Small Firms or All-Encompassing “Virtual Countries?” MIT 21st Century Initiative Working Paper, January 1997. Abridged version appears as chapter 6 of Malone, Laubacher, and Scott Morton, eds. Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. MIT Press, 2003.

Op-ed pieces and interviews
· Robert Laubacher. Beyond the downturn—Independent workers and guilds. Working Today News, 2002.
· Robert Laubacher. Guilds and the future of learning. LiNE Zine (Learning in the New Economy e-Magazine), Summer 2001.
· Robert Laubacher. Go for the Guilds. Purple Squirrel, June 2001
· Jill Rosenfeld. Free Agents in the Olde World. Fast Company, May 2001 (interview).
· Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher. Viewpoint: The Rebirth of the Guild. Boston Globe, August 24, 2000.
· David Molpus. E-Work. All Things Considered, National Public Radio, August 24, 2000.  
· Robert Laubacher. Viewpoints: Which way will it go? Exec: The Executive's Guide to Electronic Business Solutions, November 1999