In economics, production is the act of creating output, a good or service which has value and contributes to the utility of individuals. The act may or may not include factors of production other than labor. Any effort directed toward the realization of a desired product or service is a "productive" effort and the performance of such act is production. The relation between the amount of inputs used in production and the resulting amount of output is called the production function.

In social sciences, particularly sociology, production is a fundamental concern of the classical theorists of sociology, particularly and most famously in the work and theory of Karl Marx but also in that of Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Georg Simmel. With the advent of the assembly line and mass production for mass consumption, social scientists have shifted the classical fascination with the socially meaningful practice of production in society, toward the more-modern and very noticeable practice in advanced capitalist societies - being consumption.

Yochai Benkler is an Israeli-American professor of Law and author. Since 2007, he has been the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

In 1984, Benkler was the treasurer of Kibbutz Shizafon. He received his LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University in 1991 and J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1994. He worked at the law firm Ropes & Gray from 1994-1995. He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer from 1995 to 1996.

He was a professor at New York University School of Law from 1996 to 2003, and visited at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School (during 2002-2003), before joining the Yale Law School faculty in 2003. In 2007, Benkler joined Harvard Law School, where he teaches and is a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Benkler is on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. In 2011, his research led him to receive the $100,000 Ford Foundation Social Change Visionaries Award.