Don Tapscott's Biography

Mr. Tapscott is an internationally sought authority, consultant and speaker on business strategy and organizational transformation. His clients include top executives of many of the world’s largest corporations and government leaders from many countries. The Washington Technology Report says he is one of the most influential media authorities since Marshall McLuhan.

Mr. Tapscott has authored or co-authored seven widely read books on the application of technology in business. His newest book, co-authored with David Ticoll and Alex Lowy, is DIGITAL CAPITAL: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs. This best seller describes how business webs are replacing the traditional model of the firm and changing the dynamics of wealth creation and competition. Business Week describes the book as "pure enlightenment."

In 1994 Mr. Tapscott co-founded Digital 4Sight, a company that researches and designs new business models for Global 2000 organizations. He is also President of New Paradigm Learning Corporation, which he founded in 1992, and Chairman of Maptuit, an application service provider offering location-based and eLogistics services using both wireline and wireless protocols via the Internet. He is also Adjunct Professor of Management, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

Mr. Tapscott regularly contributes articles and opinion pieces to North American newspapers and magazines, and is a columnist for enRoute, Intelligent Enterprise and Director magazines.

Mr. Tapscott's earlier books include THE DIGITAL ECONOMY: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1996), and is one of the best-selling books about technology in business ever, appearing on a number of bestsellers lists, including the New York Times business book list. It had a run of seven months on the Business Week bestsellers list. It has been translated into 20 languages.

GROWING UP DIGITAL: The Rise of the Net Generation (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1998) won the first Amazon.com Bestseller Award in the summer of 1998. It has been "recommended for all libraries" by the Library Journal. Time Magazine Senior Editor, Joshua Cooper Ramo, describes GROWING UP DIGITAL as a "compellingly written look at the generation that will make it all happen." It has been translated into 14 languages and was released in paperback in May, 1999.

Mr. Tapscott is also the co-author of the international bestseller PARADIGM SHIFT: The New Promise of Information Technology (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1992) which was the first book to describe the fundamental change in computing from host-based systems for controlling costs to networks for transforming business models and strategy. He co-authored with Ann Cavoukian, WHO KNOWS: Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1997). He is also the co-editor of BLUEPRINT TO THE DIGITAL ECONOMY (McGraw-Hill, New York, July 1998), an anthology which contains chapters written by a cross-section of leaders of the digital revolution.

CREATING VALUE IN THE NETWORK ECONOMY (Harvard Business School Press, April 1999) is a selection of the best articles from the Harvard Business Review on how networks change business models and strategy, edited and with an introduction by Mr. Tapscott.

Deeply committed to the issue of mental health, Mr. Tapscott is a former member of the Board of Trustees at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry and was Chair of the Centred on Hope Campaign for the Center for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation. He is a founding member and a member of the Committee of Advisers of the Business & Economic Roundtable on Addiction & Mental Health. He and his wife, Ana Lopes, are the benefactors of the Tapscott Chair in Schizophrenia Studies at the University of Toronto. He is also involved extensively in the transformation of education, working with many universities, school boards and Educational Secretaries and Ministers around the world. He was Chair of the 1999-2001 Trent University Beyond Our Walls Capital Fundraising Campaign. Mr. Tapscott holds a B.Sc. in Psychology and Statistics, an M.Ed. specializing in Research Methodology and a Doctor of Laws (Hon) granted from the University of Alberta in 2001. Mr. Tapscott holds a B.Sc. in Psychology and Statistics, an M.Ed. specializing in Research Methodology and a Doctor of Laws (Hon) granted from the University of Alberta in 2001.