Elisabeth Reynolds is a Professor of Practice at MIT DUSP and Principal Research Scientist focused on systems of innovation, economic development, and industrial competitiveness.
My name is Liz Reynolds, and I'm a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where I received my PhD. After graduating from DUSP, I spent 10 years as the Executive Director and a Principal Research Scientist for the Industrial Performance Center (IPC) at MIT. The IPC is a multidisciplinary center based within the School of Engineering that brings engineering and the social sciences together around questions related to innovation systems within and outside of firms. The IPC was founded as an outgrowth of the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity and the book Made in America, published in 1989. From 2018-2021, I co-led MIT's Taskforce on the Work of the Future, which looked at the changing nature of work in the face of emerging technologies like robotics and AI. More recently, I worked in the Biden Administration at the National Economic Council as Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing and Economic Development in 2021 and 2022.
My research, with respect to technology, has largely touched on manufacturing, whether that is specific types of manufacturing such as biomanufacturing, or more recently digital manufacturing technologies. But my primary focus has been on manufacturing ecosystems and innovation systems more broadly. How do technologies get adopted by firms, how do regions promote growth of innovative technologies and industries that can support shared prosperity? What kinds of institutions are needed? Though I don't necessarily consider myself a technologist, I've been interested in how technologies are developed and the implication of technology adoption for humans and society, particularly as it relates to work and economic policy. To these questions, I've always thought of technology as a tool for human use that can be shaped within and by the socio-technological environment in which they emerge.
My early work was in urban economic development before my PhD at MIT, and that was grounded in how to grow new businesses, new jobs, and shared prosperity for society. The theories of change in urban economic growth were largely articulated along the lines of new knowledge creation, innovation, and technological shifts. From these shifts, my work and research considered: what does new knowledge creation look like? How does it work in businesses, universities, and across society? By also looking into economic growth models as they related to technology, my work began to examine what growth actually meant, as in, how it was defined and categorized, and what does knowledge creation to support growth look like. This led me to think about technology in the economy as a co-created entity between individuals, agents, firms, and organizations more broadly.
After my work in the Industrial Performance Center and more recently in Washington, I return to MIT with a greater understanding of what can be done when the public sector and the private sector are working together towards shared goals. I also feel a sense of urgency to actively engage in shaping the use of technology so that it's human-centric and positive for society given the growing digital divide, the downsides of AI, and some of the different ways technology can hinder growth and exacerbate income inequality. I also would say that the need for a public interest technology perspective is important because the powers and pressures that currently exist in public policy development are often wielded by private sector interests, whose tremendous resources try to ensure their interests dominate in certain public interest areas. There is a need, now more than ever, for a very thoughtful, organized response to ensure that the public sector socializes all the risks of AI and climate change, so that the benefits are not left only to the private sector. I believe we, across disciplines at the Institute, need to see and structure public interest benefits into a lot of the emerging technologies we have today.
More broadly, when it comes to MIT, I believe the Institute is actually fairly unique in its approach to technology, in the sense that it's one of the few places where you can talk about technology in a broader context than scientific research. Innovation at MIT, as I’ve seen it play out, extends beyond technology itself and considers the context of the processes and social structures that define them. This is evident in long-standing departments such as the Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the Technology Policy Program (TPP). Another great example is MIT's Taskforce on the Work of the Future, where more than 20 faculty members from all five schools including roboticists, additive manufacturing experts, political economists, anthropologists, sociologists, and labor economists came together to situate technological change in a broader context shaping the future of work in the U.S. and internationally.
MIT has a long tail when it comes to applied research. There is so much going on around shifting public policy paradigms here in the US and globally–from new industrial strategies that invest in industrial transformation and advanced manufacturing technologies, to rethinking globalization and supply chain resilience. MIT is engaged on multiple levels in these areas, from faculty participating in national commissions, to leading multi-stakeholder initiatives around particular technology development, to advising governments… We would be hard-pressed to list all the ways. And yet, there is always more that we could do as an Institution. Currently, there is an enormous need on-the-ground in translating clean energy goals into reality at the city, state and national level. Finding ways that MIT resources can expand to help where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, is a goal of mine. I also think encouraging more interdisciplinary work across departments to further collaboration and innovation is going to be essential to solving some of the critical societal challenges we are facing.
However, the shifts that are happening across the schools are causing ripple effects and having repercussions that have allowed public interest questions to enter critical research and classroom curricula. There are a tremendous number of ways that MIT is touching upon public interest issues when you look at the work that MIT is doing in semiconductors, or in clean energy, as well as the new vision through the Climate Hub for critical minerals. MIT, beyond education and research, acts as a convener, often in partnership with the private sector. In this role, MIT helps forge paths forward and articulate what is needed from both the public and private sectors. On the whole, the MIT community is actively trying to find what paths can more effectively center public interests and public interest technologies to address society’s greatest challenges.
From these touchstones, I think MIT could work to develop even closer engagement between research conducted at MIT and policymaking that's happening in the US and around the world. With the passing of the IRA and the CHIPs act, decisions are being made to spend billions of dollars in states and localities across the country. Ensuring that MIT, particularly the School of Architecture and Planning, is weighing in where it can on these decisions and helping cities and states with implementation can represent a very proactive approach to ensuring the Institute is investing in paths forward, notably to support the green transition and other critical topic areas of our era.
For more on the current work of the Industrial Performance Center at MIT, see PIT’s interview with Ben Armstrong.
Elisabeth Reynolds is a Professor of Practice at MIT DUSP and Principal Research Scientist focused on systems of innovation, regional economic development and industrial competitiveness. Her research and practice centers on regional cluster development and innovation systems as well as advanced manufacturing, growing innovative companies to scale, and building innovation capacity in developed and developing countries. She recently served in the Biden Administration at the National Economic Council as Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing and Economic Development from 2021 to October, 2022. In that capacity, she was engaged in many of the country’s supply chain challenges as well as helped to develop the Biden Administration’s manufacturing agenda and broader industrial strategy around infrastructure, semiconductors and clean energy. She was Executive Director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center from 2010 to 2021 and co-led with Professors David Autor and David Mindell MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future. The Task Force, which ran from 2018-2021, was an institute-wide initiative with 20+ faculty examining the relationship between new technologies such as AI and robotics and the nature of work and how U.S. institutions need to be strengthened to support workers more broadly. In 2021, Autor, Mindell and Reynolds published Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines.
Before coming to MIT for her Ph.D., Reynolds was the Director of the City Advisory Practice at the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a non-profit founded by Professor Michael Porter focused on job and business growth in inner city and urban areas. Liz holds a B.A. in government from Harvard. She was the Fiske Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge and holds a Master’s in Economics from the University of Montreal as well as a Ph.D. from MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
