Viktor Mayer-Schonberger

Why organisations work with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

• His research on data-sharing directly shaped the EU’s Digital Markets Act – when he talks about regulatory risk, he is describing a landscape he helped design.
• Big Data (co-authored with The Economist‘s Kenneth Cukier) sold over one million copies and set the terms of the enterprise data conversation for a decade; organisations benefit from the intellectual framework behind the book, not just its conclusions.
• As a member of Germany’s Digital Council, he advised Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet on digital policy (2018–2021) – giving him a rare dual perspective on both corporate strategy and governmental decision-making.
• His 2024 book Guardrails (with Urs Gasser, hailed in Science journal) offers the most current framework available for deciding which decisions to delegate to AI and which to retain – a live, unresolved question in most boardrooms.
• He holds the Oxford Chair as one of three statutory professors at the Oxford Internet Institute, combining research authority with over 250 keynote engagements across Fortune 500 companies and government bodies.

Biography highlights

• Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute – one of three statutory chairs
• Ten years on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; continuing affiliate at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
• Member of Germany’s Digital Council; personal adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel on digital policy (2018–2021)
• Delete (Princeton University Press, 2009) won the 2010 Marshall McLuhan Award and the 2010 Don K. Price Award for Best Book in Science and Technology Politics
• Big Data (2013, with Kenneth Cukier) – NYT and WSJ bestseller; over one million copies sold; translated into more than 20 languages
• Research cited in, and proposals adopted by, the EU Digital Markets Act; covered by the New York Times, Financial Times, BBC, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and Nature

Biography

Data governance is not a compliance function. It is, as Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has spent three decades arguing, the central strategic question of the digital economy, and most organisations are still treating it as a footnote.

Mayer-Schönberger holds the Chair of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, one of three statutory professorships at the OII. Before Oxford, he spent a decade at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and three years at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. That arc – from entrepreneurship to academic leadership across three continents – gives him a fluency in organisational, governmental, and market dynamics that few researchers in this space share.

His books have not merely described the data economy; they have shaped it. Delete (Princeton, 2009) initiated the debate that produced the EU’s right to be forgotten. Access Rules (2022) and the earlier Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data proposed the data-sharing mandates that were subsequently enacted in the EU Digital Markets Act. His bestseller Big Data – co-authored with The Economist‘s Kenneth Cukier – sold over a million copies and remains the foundational text for enterprise data strategy. His most recent book, Guardrails (2024, with Urs Gasser), praised in Science journal, addresses the question now live in every boardroom: how to draw the line between AI delegation and human judgement.

From 2018 to 2021 he served as a member of Germany’s Digital Council, advising Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet directly. He is a faculty affiliate at Harvard’s Belfer Center and has addressed senior audiences at IBM, SAP, Microsoft, and Roche, as well as regulatory and governmental forums across the EU, UK, and US. His advisory boards have included Microsoft and the World Economic Forum.

Key speaking topics

• AI governance and the limits of delegation
• Data access, competition, and digital market regulation
• The strategic economics of data
• Information privacy and the right to be forgotten
• Human decision-making in the age of AI
• Digital policy and corporate regulatory risk
• The data-driven transformation of capitalism

Ideal for

• Boards and executive leadership teams navigating AI governance and regulatory exposure
• Chief Data, Digital, and AI Officers building organisational data strategy
• General counsel, compliance, and risk functions in regulated industries
• Public policy and regulatory affairs teams across the EU and UK

Audience outcomes

• A structured framework for distinguishing decisions that should be delegated to AI from those that must remain with humans
• Clarity on the regulatory direction of travel in the EU and UK, and what it means for data strategy
• An understanding of how data access and sharing mandates will reshape competitive dynamics in their sector
• Practical grounding in the governance failures that produce both legal exposure and strategic underperformance
• A shared language for board-level conversations about AI risk that moves beyond the abstract