Mark Esposito is a globally recognized scholar, educator, and practitioner at the forefront of technology, economics, and public policy. He specializes in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and artificial intelligence, with expertise spanning academia, international organizations, and the private sector.
At Northeastern University, Dr. Esposito brings significant interdisciplinary insight. Besides his professorial appointment at the D'Amore McKim School of Business, he serves as Faculty Fellow at the Center for Emerging Markets, and Affiliate Scientist at the Global Resilience Institute. His academic work is complemented by faculty appointments at leading institutions including Harvard University, where he holds affiliations with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Center for International Development at Harvard Kennedy School, the Davis Center for Eurasian Studies, and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He has served as an Adjunct Professor of Policy at Georgetown University and a Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Esposito is closely connected to policy and innovation initiatives worldwide. He serves as Chief Economist of micro1, a Silicon Valley AI lab, and is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is a member of the World Economic Forum's Global AI Alliance and Fostering Converging Technologies group, and has been a Professorial Fellow at the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government in Dubai since 2017. He has advised government agencies across the Gulf Cooperation Council and Eurasia and, for over a decade, co-led the Institutes Council on Microeconomics of Competitiveness at Harvard Business School under Professor Michael Porter.
An accomplished entrepreneur, Dr. Esposito co-founded Nexus FrontierTech, an influential machine learning research firm, and the AI Native Foundation. He was one of the Inaugural Research Fellows at the Circular Economy Research Center at Cambridge.
Recognized by Thinkers50 Radar in 2016 as one of the world's top 30 business thinkers, Dr. Esposito is a widely published author with over 150 peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications and 14 books. Notable works include the Amazon bestsellers Understanding How the Future Unfolds (2017) and The AI Republic (2019). Recent books include The Emerging Economies under the Dome of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2022), The Great Remobilization: Strategies and Designs for a Global Smarter World (MIT Press, 2023), Digitalization in Emerging Economies (Cambridge University Press, 2025), and Becoming AI Native: Charting the Next AI Frontier (Routledge, 2026). Forthcoming titles include Tectonic Shifts: How Technology is Remaking Global Power Dynamics (Penguin Random House), and Who Rules the Internet? Polycentric Governance and the Political Economy of the Digital Commons (Routledge). Dr. Esposito holds a doctorate from École des Ponts ParisTech in France, the world's oldest civil engineering school.
Education
- PhD Business, Technology, Economics, Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech, Paris
- MA Social Sciences, University of Turin, Italy
- BA Social Sciences, University of Turin, Italy
Awards & recognition
- 2023 Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Strategy Award for the work on The Great Remobilization
- 2023 Edification of the “Mark Esposito Chair of Industrial Transitions” at Woxsen University, India
- 2021 – 23 World's Top 50 Influencers in the Field of Global Sustainability, Thinkers 360 (three consecutive years)
- 2019 Global 100 Influencers, MIT Technology Review
- 2018 Chartered Management Institute's own magazine Professional Manager in the UK to name him as one of the 18 new voices in 2018 that reshape management and leadership.
- 2017 CK Prahalad Breakthrough Idea Award by Thinkers50, London, UK
- Teaching Excellence Award, Harvard University, Fall 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
- 2016 Thinkers50, Radar. Recognized among the 30 most influential business thinkers in the world, on the rise, London, UK
- 2015 Tomorrow's Thought Leader Recognition, Thinkers50, London, UK
Publications
- Cohen, B., Kietzmann, J., Esposito, M., & Park, A. (2026). Circular cities: Transforming systems through organizational innovation. California Management Review, 68(2), 1–17.
- Tse, T., Esposito, M., Goh, D., & Lee, P. (2026). Becoming AI native: Charting the next AI frontier. Routledge.
- Esposito, M., Akbar, Y., & Campbell, F. (2025). Digitalization in emerging economies. Cambridge University Press.
- Sharma, S., Layes, J., Esposito, M., & Akbar, Y. (2025). Harnessing uncertainty with effectuation and AI: A dynamic strategic calibration framework. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5146519
- Lanteri, A., Esposito, M., & Cappuccio, M. (2025). Maximizing the economic, environmental, and social impact of the metaverse. Thunderbird International Business Review, 1–14.
- Esposito, M., Tse, T., Goh, D., & Harkiolakis, T. (2025). An examination of the environmental and climatic consequences stemming from the integration of the metaverse into converging digital ecosystems. International Journal of Environment, Workplace and Employment, 9(1), 16–35.
- Esposito, M., Sarbazvatan, S., Tse, T., & Silva-Atencio, G. (2024). The use of artificial intelligence for automatic analysis and reporting of software defects. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 7, Article 1443956. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2024.1443956
- Esposito, M., & Tse, T. (2024). Mitigating the risks of generative AI in government through algorithmic governance. In Proceedings of the 25th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o '24, Article 60). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3657054.3657124
- Tse, T., Esposito, M., Goh, D., & Lee, P. (2024). Why adopting GenAI is so difficult. Harvard Business Review (April 2024).
- Groth, O., Esposito, M., & Tse, T. (2023). The great remobilization: Strategies and designs for a global smarter world. MIT Press.
