Doug Brown is a globally recognized market-intelligence and sourcing strategist whose work now bridges two defining operating-model eras: the outsourcing wave that reshaped corporate supply chains in the 2000s and the reshoring movement now redefining U.S. manufacturing. His background spans thirty years of executive corporate, qualitative research, and business development in both Fortune 50 and start-up environments. Black Book’s leadership profile also notes postgraduate study at the London School of Economics, a masters in Healthcare Administration from the University of Houston, and a Bachelors of Arts degree  in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of Florida.

Brown first emerged as a prominent voice in the sourcing economy in 2003, when he co-founded Brown-Wilson Group, a firm focused on outsourcing and business process optimization. In 2005, he published The Black Book of Outsourcing with Wiley. The book was designed as a practical guide for executives assessing and implementing outsourcing, managing partner relationships, measuring performance, and leading transition change. It was first published in 2005, later revised for the post-2009 environment, and became a WSJ, Amazon and Barnes & Noble bestselling manual for companies navigating the height of globalization.

The impact of The Black Book of Outsourcing extended well beyond the book itself. Brown’s methodologies for evaluating outsourcing vendors helped establish a new standard for client-experience and satisfaction benchmarking, and the Black Book franchise became a recognized reference point across the sourcing market. By 2009, Brown-Wilson Group and Black Book Research were surveying more than a thousand global corporations annually on outsourcing provider and advisor performance. That same year, Datamonitor (later Informa) acquired the Brown-Wilson/Black Book sourcing assets, and Brown became Datamonitor’s chief executive leading the brand’s independent-research reputation and marketing with a strong client base as strategic strengths internationally.

Brown later expanded Black Book Research into a broader independent-intelligence platform, especially in healthcare technology and services. Black Book has generated more than three million verified survey responses since 2011, including more than 500,000 in 2025 from respondents in 47  countries. That same research discipline now carries forward into Brown’s reshoring work, where the focus has shifted toward manufacturing capacity, automation, supply-chain resilience, and domestic production strategy.

Today, that next chapter is represented by Black Book Insights, which is positioned around three integrated pillars: Advisory & Consulting, The Black Book of Reshoring (Wiley), and a reshoring data platform and research body of knowledge.

Wiley’s description of the forthcoming reshoring title explicitly frames it as the successor to The Black Book of Outsourcing—a response to how dramatically the industrial, geopolitical, and economic landscape has changed over the last twenty years.

In April 2025, Doug Brown launched Black Book Insights, a start-up research and advisory firm focused entirely on manufacturing and reshoring. The new business unit was created to meet rising demand for consultation and knowledge leadership as companies, investors, and policymakers shifted from offshore efficiency to U.S. production resilience, domestic capacity, and industrial renewal.

Black Book Insights now brings together advisory services, independent reshoring research, a growing data platform, and the forthcoming The Black Book of Reshoring—the natural follow-on to the outsourcing work that first established Brown as one of the market’s best-known sourcing authorities.