Venkatesh Rao is a writer and independent management consultant. He is the founder of the Ribbonfarm blog and the Breaking Smart technology analysis site, and the author of Tempo, a book on decision-making. He holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering (2003) from the University of Michigan. Between 2004 and 2006, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, working on command and control systems. From 2006 to 2011 he was a senior researcher at the Xerox Research Center, Webster (now part of PARC). He has been an independent management consultant and writer since 2011. He is currently based in Los Angeles, on a fellowship at the Berggruen Institute.