He is a retired Wall Street technology strategist, investment banker, and serial entrepreneur. Currently, he is president of the Center for the Study of Digital Life, a strategic research group dedicated to understanding the effects of digital technologies on the three spheres that now dominate global affairs—East, West, and Digital.

He began his Wall Street career as a principal at Sanford Bernstein and went on to Alex. Brown & Sons, where he was a partner and formed the New Media banking practice, which managed the initial public offering for AOL in 1992. In the 1990s, Mark’s “Why IBM Failed” article in Harvard Business Review led to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and a consulting assignment at IBM that pushed the company towards its leadership in the services business.