​Tom has advised Loop AI Group since 2015, helping position the company as one of the first independent enterprise AI companies in the market—years before artificial intelligence became a mainstream business imperative. As the world's foremost authority on how organizations compete with analytics and AI, and as the author of the seminal Harvard Business Review article "Competing on Analytics" (named one of the twelve "must read" articles in HBR's 100-year history), Tom's guidance has been instrumental in shaping Loop's thought leadership and enterprise positioning in the cognitive computing space.

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Tom Davenport is the President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, co-founder of the International Institute for Analytics, a Research Fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, a Visiting Professor at Brown University's School of Professional Studies and Oxford University's Saïd Business School, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte's Chief Data and AI Officer Program. He teaches analytics, artificial intelligence, and big data in executive programs at Babson, Harvard Business School, Harvard School of Public Health, and MIT Sloan School.
 

A recent Carnegie Mellon University Alumni Award honoree, the Tepper School of Business (formerly the Graduate School of Industrial Administration) played a formative role in his career.

For over three decades, Tom has been at the forefront of every major management innovation—from process reengineering and knowledge management to analytics and artificial intelligence. When the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) named him their inaugural Distinguished Research Fellow in 2019, Chairman Carla O'Dell stated: "Tom Davenport has been at the forefront of every major management innovation for 30 years and is one of the world's top business gurus... His is a voice of reason amid the inevitable hyperbole that accompanies every 'next big thing' in management."

Tom pioneered the business process reengineering movement with his 1990 article "The New Industrial Engineering: Information Technology and Business Process Redesign" (co-authored with James Short in MIT Sloan Management Review, winner of the Edgar Schein Award for best article on planned change) and his 1993 book Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology—the first article and book on the topic. He later offered a thoughtful critique of the movement's excesses in his 1995 Fast Company article "The Fad that Forgot People."

In the late 1990s, Tom shifted focus to knowledge management, co-authoring Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know with Larry Prusak (1998), which received the Library Journal's Best Business Book award and established fundamental principles for the emerging field.

Tom's most influential contribution came with his 2006 Harvard Business Review article "Competing on Analytics," which introduced the concept of analytics as a source of competitive advantage. The journal's editors named it one of the twelve "must read" articles in HBR's 100-year history. The 2007 book of the same name (co-authored with Jeanne Harris) sold over 100,000 copies, was translated into 13 languages, and was named by CIO Insight among "the most provocative, engaging business books of all-time." Tom developed the widely adopted Analytics 1.0/2.0/3.0 framework describing the evolution from traditional business intelligence through the big data era to data-enriched offerings.

In 2012, Tom co-authored the landmark Harvard Business Review article "Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century" with D.J. Patil, which helped define and popularize the emerging profession.

Continuing to push the boundaries of management and technology, Tom has explored the impact of AI and automation on the workforce. His 2015 Harvard Business Review article "Beyond Automation"—recognized as one of the year's best—led to the 2016 book Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines (co-authored with Julia Kirby), named one of "5 Books CEOs Are Reading Now."

As artificial intelligence gained prominence in business applications, Tom became the leading voice on practical AI implementation. His 2018 book The AI Advantage: How to Put the Artificial Intelligence Revolution to Work (MIT Press) was praised as "a must-read for executives who wish to truly become cognitive corporation leaders." Since then, he has authored or co-authored seven books on AI topics, including: Working with AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration (MIT Press, 2022, with Steven Miller); Advanced Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (Elgar, 2022); All In on AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023, with Nitin Mittal—a Wall Street Journal bestseller); All Hands on Tech: The AI-Powered Citizen Revolution (Wiley, 2024); Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work, and Life (Irreplaceable Publishing, 2025); and The New Science of Customer Relationships: Fulfilling the One-to-One Promise with AI (Wiley, 2025, with Jim Sterne).

A prolific writer and thought leader, Tom has authored or co-authored 26 books and published over 300 articles in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, the Financial Times, Forbes, and many other publications. He is one of HBR's most frequently published authors, and his 2006 "Competing on Analytics" article was named to their list of the most influential management ideas of the decade. He writes regularly for Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and MIT Sloan Management Review. His work has significantly influenced business practices across industries, with major corporations including Capital One, Netflix, Amazon, and Progressive Insurance implementing analytics strategies based on his frameworks. According to Google Scholar, his work has been cited by over 174,000 scholars.

Tom has been named one of the top three business/technology analysts in the world (after Peter Drucker and Tom Friedman), one of the 100 most influential people in the IT industry (ranking as the highest business academic), one of the world's "Top 25 Consultants" by Consulting Magazine, and one of Fortune magazine's Top 50 Business Professors in the World. The Analytics Hall of Fame inducted him as a Global Leader in 2019. LinkedIn recognized him as their #1 Voice in Education in 2016 and a Top Voice in Technology in 2018. Additional honors include the NASSCOM Global Leadership Award for Thought Leadership (2014), the C. Jackson Grayson Quality Pioneer Award from the American Productivity and Quality Center (2014), CIO Magazine's "10 Masters of the New Economy" (2000), and Research.com's Business and Management in United States Leader Award (2022, 2023).
Tom earned his B.A. in Sociology from Trinity University (1976, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and his M.A. (1979) and Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, the UVA Darden School of Business, Boston University, and the University of Texas at Austin. He has also led research centers at Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Company, CSC Index, and the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change.