John Zysman is Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley and co-founder/co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. He received his B.A at Harvard and his Ph.D. at MIT. Zysman’s ongoing work covers the implications of platforms and intelligent tools for work, entrepreneurship, and international competition; and the economic challenges and opportunities of climate change and the green economy.
From these positions, Zysman has made contributions to the policy and intellectual debates, building a record of thought leadership on the global economy going back five decades. His earlier work was influential in US-Japan trade policy debates in the 1980s. More recently, Zysman has co-authored a series of papers documenting how platforms have transformed the production and distribution of goods and services; these include the well-received “The Rise of the Platform Economy,” published in Issues in Science and Technology in 2016. In addition, several recent articles, including “Unicorns, Cheshire Cats, and the Evolving Logic of Entrepreneurial Finance,” have been featured in popular media such as The Economist, The Financial Times, and the Guardian. As a director of the Work and Intelligent Tools and Systems (WITS) initiative at the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), Zysman is currently exploring how the development, deployment, and consequences of technologies can be shaped by business and policy choices. In addition to his academic research, Zysman is engaged as a consultant, advisor, and board member for governments, corporations, and NGOs.