Larry Prusak, Executive Director of the Institute for Knowledge Management, is a Managing Principal with IBM Global Services, in Boston.  He has extensive consulting experience, within the U.S. and internationally, in helping firms leverage and optimize their information and knowledge resources.

A respected authority in his field, Larry has lectured and been published widely.  His book, Managing Information Strategically  (John Wiley & Sons, 1994), co-authored with James McGee, is a basic text on the role of information in gaining competitive advantage.  His articles include “Myth of Information Overload” (International Journal of Information Management, 1995), “Information Politics”  (Sloan Management Review, Fall 1993), “Blow up the Corporate Library” (International Journal of Information Management, 1993), “Knowledge and Risk Management” (California Management Review, Spring 1996), and “Eleven Sins of Knowledge Management” (California Management Review, Spring 1998).  He has recently co-authored two books with Tom Davenport: Information Ecology (Oxford University Press, 1997), and Working Knowledge (Harvard Business School Press, 1997).  Working Knowledge has sold over 50,000 copies and has been translated into 12 languages.  His most recent book, In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work, was published in February 2001 by Harvard Business School Press.  Larry is frequently quoted on organizational knowledge issues by such business periodicals as Fortune, Business Week, CIO, and many others.

Prior to joining IBM, Larry was a Principal in Ernst & Young’s Center for Business Innovation, specializing in issues of corporate knowledge management.  While there, he was responsible for helping to build a consulting practice centered on firms managing their knowledge resources.  Larry’s professional background also includes work as a researcher and librarian at Baker Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, and as a teacher of social and economic history at several universities.

In 1991, Larry won the SLA Professional Award for Contributions to the Field of Information Science.  In 1990, he won the H.W. Wilson Award for the year’s best article on information science.  He holds a B.A. in history from Long Island University, an M.A. in economic and social history from New York University (where he completed all the examinations and course work toward a Ph.D.), and an M.S. in information science from Simmons College.  He has guest lectured at the Wharton School, Stanford, Harvard, the University of California, and New York University, and is a visiting faculty member of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College.