He is currently teaching technology entrepreneurship at Northeastern University and is a senior consultant for the  Innovation International Media Consulting Group. His most recent project (2006) involved creating a strategic plan for a major publishing company in Moscow, Russia. 

Previously he was  Research Consultant at the MIT Program on Internet & Telecoms Convergence.  He spent 1997-98 as Visiting Professor in Communications at Penn State University.  From 1994 to 1997 he was the Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) Professor of Telecommunications at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he founded and was Chairman of the Center for Information Industry Research. He has been an instructor in financial and strategic management at Boston University. 

In 1986 Ben co-founded and through 1994 was chief executive of Nova Systems Inc., a firm that created and distributed software for management information reporting in telecommunications centers. From 1979 to 1986 he was executive director of the Program on Information Resources Policy (PIRP) at Harvard University where he had responsibility for funding and directing research on the implications of changing information technology for business, government, and society. Previously he was Director of Books and Studies at Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc.

His research interests include telecommunications policy, mass media economics, entrepreneurship, as well as the political, social and cultural implications of changing information technologies. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in these areas, including Business Basics for Technological Entrepreneurship, Introduction to Cybermedia, Telecommunications Regulation, Media Economics and Information Technology and Policy. His business expertise is in the strategic application of information technologies and future directions for the media industries.

He is the author, co-author or editor of 12 books. The Digital Divide was published in 2001. Who Owns The Media?, first published in 1980, was extensively revised and reissued in 2000. The Information Resources Policy Handbook  and The Internet Upheaval were published by MIT Press in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Other books include Issues in New Information Technology and Understanding New Media. His articles have appeared in trade, popular, and scholarly journals, including Telecommunications Policy, Science Digest, Success, Teleconnect, Foreign Policy, Reason, Daedalus and the Journal of Communication. Articles and cases include "The Future of Media Companies in the International Arena," "Management Information: Back to Basics," and "Universal Access to Online Services: An Examination of the Issue."

He is the co-editor of the Journal of Media Economics from which he received its Award of Honor in 2002 for his "scholarly contributions and inspiration to the field of media economics" and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Media Management. He was twice Program Chairman of  TPRC's  Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy and was Chairman of the Board of Directors of TPRC, Inc. 

A graduate of Dickinson College, he received his M.B.A from Harvard University and Ph.D from Temple University. He has been an invited speaker or consultant in Europe, South America, Asia, Australia as well as in the United States and Canada.

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