Michael Schrage
Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School of Management's Initiative on the Digital Economy. His research, writing, and advisory work focuses on the behavioral economics of models, prototypes, and metrics as strategic resources for managing innovation risk and opportunity. He is author of the award-winning book The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press, 2014), Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), and Serious Play (Harvard Business Review Press, 2000). His latest book, Recommendation Engines, was published in September 2020 by MIT Press as part of its Essential Knowledge series.
Schrage has run design workshops and executive education programs on innovation, experimentation, and strategic measurement for organizations all over the world and is currently pioneering work in selvesware technologies designed to augment aspects, attributes, and talents of productive individuals. He is particularly interested in the future co-evolution of expertise, advice, and human agency as technologies become smarter than the people using them.
Previously a Merrill Lynch Forum Innovation Fellow, Schrage founded and was executive director of the Merrill Lynch Innovation Grants Competition for doctoral students worldwide. An angel investor in several digital media and machine learning startups, he has been a featured and top-trafficked blogger on the Harvard Business Review site. Schrage’s work has been published in MIT Sloan Management Review, Fortune magazine, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Nikkei Asia, and Communications of the ACM, as well as other peer-reviewed publications.
Since 2017, Schrage has been a guest editor for MIT SMR’s Big Ideas initiatives, including Future of Leadership, Future of the Workforce (2019-2020), Performance Management (2018-2019), and Strategic Measurement (2017-2018). Explore his work with MIT SMR below.

Michael Schrage
Guest editor, MIT Sloan Management Review
Research fellow, MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy
Visiting fellow, Imperial College Business School
- Big Ideas Research
- Selected articles
- Webinars & Video




Analytics & Business Intelligence
Leading With Next-Generation Key Performance Indicators
Michael Schrage and David Kiron

AI & Machine Learning
Machine Learning in the Travel Industry: The Data-Driven Marketer’s Ticket to Success
Michael Schrage and David Kiron

Technology Implementation
Machine Learning in the Health Care Industry: Homing In on the KPIs That Matter
Michael Schrage and David Kiron

AI & Machine Learning
Machine Learning in the Retail Industry: Making a Strategic Investment in Technology
Michael Schrage and David Kiron

AI & Machine Learning
Machine Learning in the Automotive Industry: Aligning Investments and Incentives
Michael Schrage and David Kiron
- Big Ideas Research
- Selected articles
- Webinars & Video


Analytics & Business Intelligence
Motivating Your Workers With Opportunity Marketplaces
Michael Schrage and Paul Michelman



Analytics & Business Intelligence
Making Strategic Decisions With Data
Andrew Low Ah Kee, interviewed by Michael Schrage
