Larry Downes (born March 1, 1959) is an Internet industry analyst and author on business strategies and information technology. Downes is best known for his first book, Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance (Harvard Business School 1998), which focuses on the potential of products and services for dramatically changing business. Unleashing the Killer App was a New York Times bestseller, sold over 200,000 copies, and was named by the Wall Street Journal one of the five most important books on business and the Internet ever published.[1]
Downes is also the author of The Strategy Machine: Building Your Business One Idea at a Time (HarperBusiness 2001) and The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces that Govern Business and Life in the Digital Age (Basic Books 2009), and co-author or Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation (Portfolio 2014).
His most recent book is Pivot to the Future (Public Affairs 2019), which was Amazon's best-selling strategy title for April and May 2019.
He has testified frequently before Congress on technology policy. On February 15, 2011, he testified in front of Congress against the FCC's net neutrality rules, the so-called "Open Internet" rule, which prohibits blocking of lawful content and bans various forms of discrimination in the handling of specific data packets.[6] He is a critic of over-regulation and an advocate of increased competition. His writings have appeared in various newspapers and magazines around the world, including Forbes,[7]CNET, USA Today,[8]Harvard Business Review,[9]Wired, The Washington Post,[10]MIT Sloan Management Review,[11]The Economist, and the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology.
From 2014, he was appointed a project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy's Evolution of Regulation and Innovation project, housed at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.[12] He also serves as distinguished fellow for the Accenture Research.