Youngjin Yoo is one of the leading global scholars in digital innovation and has made significant intellectual contributions to the role of technology in organizations.
Yoo joined Case Western Reserve University as a faculty member in 1997 and taught for 10 years before leaving for Temple University in 2006. He returned to Case Western Reserve in 2016 and, not long after, became the founding faculty director of xLab at Weatherhead School of Management. Recently, he became associate dean of research at the school.
Yoo has published 170 papers, co-authored four books and received more than $5 million in research grants. He gives seminars, lectures, and keynotes around the globe. The reach of Yoo’s work on a global stage is impressive: He was recently named on the 2021 World’s Top 2% Scientists list, which includes the most-cited scientists across the length of their career. He was also one of nine Weatherhead current and former faculty members who helped contribute to Research.com listing Case Western Reserve as a top business and management university in 2023.
This past year, Yoo and the xLab team at Case Western Reserve led a study to create a responsible universal learning and employment record ecosystem. Finding qualified employees with necessary skills and credentials has become a major challenge for many organizations. The primary reason is the antiquated ways in which educational institutions and employers provide records for education, training, and employment. What is needed is a universal Learning and Employment Record (LER) ecosystem that is distributed, interoperable and open, allowing individuals to collect, store, own and share self-verifying credentials that are issued and accepted by participating organizations. This requires platforms to provide privacy protection, verifiability, data portability, and scalability at the same time.