MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How Should the Biden Administration Approach Tech Regulation? With Great Care.

The Biden administration is inheriting a crisis in the regulation of technology, among other challenges the United States faces. While other policy decisions will surely have a more immediate impact on the economy and how it recovers from recent body blows, the new administration’s response to calls to restrain Silicon Valley’s disruptive tendencies could, in the long term, determine the ultimate course of several key industries.

The threat of greatly expanded legal oversight is particularly acute for the largest tech companies and software platforms, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. But across the federal government, the new administration will be confronted with thorny questions about the technologies driving transformation in many other sectors — including financial services, health care, entertainment, logistics, transportation, and manufacturing.

About the Author

Larry Downes is the author of five books on disruptive innovation’s economic, social, and legal impacts on business, including the New York Times bestseller Unleashing the Killer App (Harvard Business School Press, 1998), with Chunka Mui; Pivot to the Future (PublicAffairs, 2019), with Omar Abbosh and Paul Nunes; and The Laws of Disruption (Basic Books, 2009).

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