This year's Symposium will have more MIT academic content and leadership than ever before, thanks to the addition of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) as a Co-Organizer! Let me elaborate what the IDE brings to the Symposium.

The Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) is a major effort addressing the impact of digital technology on business, the economy, and society.  Drawing upon MIT Sloan's strengths in technology and innovation, its internationally recognized faculty, and over a decade of research and partnership through Sloan's Center for Digital Business, the new Initiative will analyze the broad changes brought about by digital technology.  Many of the key issues are described in two recent books by Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and Dr. Andrew McAfee called Race Against the Machine and The Second Machine Age.  Nearly all of their research publications are available at no cost to the IT community at large through their website, http://mitsloan.mit.edu/ide.

MIT IDE has organized the following Symposium panels:

• The Impact of Automation, moderated by Erik Brynjolfsson
• Platform Shift - How New Business Models are Changing the Shape of Industry, and the Role of CIOs, moderated by Marshall Van Alstyne
• Getting the Data - Approaches to Managing Personal Data, moderated by Alex (Sandy) Pentland
• The Future (and Potential) of Large-Scale Digital Experiments, moderated by Sinan Aral
• Leading Digital: A Manifesto for IT and Business Executives, moderated by George Westerman
• Objects in the Future are Closer Than They Appear, Andrew McAfee

Erik Brynjolfsson	Marshall Van Alstyne	Alex (Sandy) Pentland	Sinan Aral	George Westerman	Andrew McAfee