Before his academic career, Thomas worked several years in leadership positions for nonprofit organizations and for Don Tapscott in Toronto, a leading digital economy management thinker. Thomas earned his doctoral degree in business administration from Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz. As part of his doctoral studies, he visited the University of Alberta, FU Berlin and the University of Edinburgh. Under the umbrella of digital transformation, Thomas researches novel forms of organizing, crowdsourcing, various forms of openness (open strategy, open innovation, and open government) and (cultural) entrepreneurship in a digital economy. Thomas' work appears in several books and international journals, and he speaks at academic as well as practitioner-oriented conferences.