W. Brian Arthur Podcast

We connected with Arthur about modeling economies and enterprises at the SFI.

The Autonomous Economy  HBR Podcast

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One of the founders of complexity economics, W. Brian Arthur, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how artificial intelligence is ushering us into the age of the autonomous economy with radical implications for our society.

In this podcast, Brian and Azeem also discuss:

Why the decision-making ability of AI will have a different class of impact on the economy than previous ‘landmark’ technologies like the printing press.

Whether it is possible to have publicly available decision-making enabled by artificial intelligence outside the proprietary enclaves of Silicon Valley monopolies.

Increasing Returns Theory and how to generate good governance in a digital economy with dominant market actors.  .... "

Rethinking Social Networks

How can we use this idea to think about the evolution of social networks over time, and how they are influenced.?   We talked the implications of networks with SFI very early on, and did substantial experiments as a result.

Rethinking Social Networks 
Carnegie Mellon University   By Daniel Carroll

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers have developed a way to show how social networks change and develop over time. The core of the Weighted Betweenness Preferential Attachment (WBPA) model focuses on the notion of "node betweenness," a quality of being between communities, while previous models have centered on the amount of connections that an individual has. The researchers found node betweenness is actually a greater attractor and driver for the formation of social ties than node degree or other measures of centrality. Instead of examining only the amount of connections a single node has, WBPA places more emphasis on community formation and the quality of node connections. CMU's Radu Marculescu says, "The new model builds on the idea that humans are better at observing qualitative aspects than quantitative ones, which is why people typically favor investing in fewer qualitative social ties rather than numerous lower quality ties."  ... " 

Conversation with J Doyne Farmer

I recall following the work of J Doyne Farmer when we were interested in economic models that included arguments about complexity, at the Santa Fe Institute.  Here is a conversation with him that is a good update on what he is working on.  Note the mention of the Prediction Company, which I recall hearing about.  And the link to BiosGroup, which received $5 Million from P&G for Supply Chain modeling. 

Collective Awareness
A Conversation with J. Doyne Farmer [7.17.18] in the Edge

J. DOYNE FARMER is director of the Complexity Economics Programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He was a co-founder of Prediction Company, a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to the United Bank of Switzerland in 2006. 

A Workshop for Network Theory

A recent meeting on network theory by the Santa Fe Institute.  We used these approaches for supply chain models, and for marketing decisions.   Looking for more that came out of this conference.  Some at the link.  " ... Networks are everywhere – from social interactions to species feeding relationships to the algorithms that pull information from large datasets. Because of its broad utility in quantifying interacting systems, network theory now finds application in many disciplines.  ... But network theory, like any emerging field, needs to keep up with the times. ... " 

Turing Test for Creative Intelligence

How can we determine a machine or system is more than just intelligent, but also creative?    A place for a Turing test.

Cities in a Complex World

From the Santa Fe Institute:  I used to be our representative to SFI in the 90s and we got quite a few inspirations from them, and we provided them with problems to solve.  Some led to major projects. " ... Cities have been compared to everything from beehives to river networks, but most of these metaphors fall short. In the Santa Fe New Mexican, SFI Professor Luis Bettencourt looks to the data to suggest a new way of thinking about how cities function and grow. ... " .  The SFI article is non technical, but points to others that give you the complexity technology.

A Second Digital Economy

W Brian Arthur at PARC via the Santa Fe Institute , who worked with us in the 90s to look at consumer behavior complexity simulation.  In a 65 minute video: Signalling the Second Digital Revolution   " ... a Palo Alto Research Center video presentation, SFI External Professor W. Brian Arthur explains how technology advances are signaling the emergence of a second digital economy that will change the complexion of culture and business forever.... " 

The Separation of Web Pages

Back in the 90s we visited mathematician at the Santa Fe Institute, and learned to soon to be iconic statistic that people were separated on the web by a remarkably low number of clicks.  (You can still join the SFI's complex systems course, now in progress).  At the time we hope to use this statistic for marketing connections.  Now a new study, mentioned in Mashable, says that there is a maximum of 19 clicks between pages on the Web.  Not sure how we might have used that, except for knowledgeefficiency measures,  but still interesting.

Complexity Course from SFI

A free eleven week MOOC course on a introduction to the concepts of complexity by the Santa Fe Institute.   To start February 4.  An example of Massive open online courses.

Unilever Balancing Creativity and Sales

In Adage:  " ... The task of delivering on both sales and creativity falls to Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed, a career Unilever executive named to his leadership post and placed on the company's executive board in 2010 by CEO Paul Polman. And while Mr. Weed is happy with the business results -- including organic sales growth of 7% in the first half of the year putting Unilever near the top of his competitive set -- he's still not completely satisfied ...   "

SFI and Big Data at Davos

Interesting piece about SFI and the leverage of big data. I am skeptical, it is about leveraging the data, regardless of size or complexity.

3M Visual Attention Service Update

We examined the 3M VAS Attention Service scanning tool several times,  some new developments.  Press release. An Explanatory video.  Worth looking at  closely, free trial available.

" ...3M launches the fourth generation of its Visual Attention Service (VAS) scanning tool, with new video capabilities and sequencing features. VAS - viewed by marketers as a more convenient and affordable alternative to eye tracking – enhances the visual impact of professional design across advertising, marketing, and all forms of digital and print media, increasing the probability that the most desired elements will get noticed.

VAS analyzes video to illustrate how people are most likely to interact with any scene and identify where the average human eye will focus at any given moment – a capability invaluable to those looking to predict consumers’ visual journey in retail environments, and how that journey plays into the path to purchase. New sequencing capabilities demonstrate the sequence of fixation points where the human eye is most likely to pay attention in the first few seconds of viewing an image. Customized setting options for direct mail/email and in-store contexts automatically take into account how human vision interacts with different viewing circumstances.

Additional applications include:
Product placement
Packaging design
Point-of-sale displays and signage
Television and infomercials
Film trailers
Rich media advertising and other online video
Direct marketing   .... "

Life, Complexity and Financial Markets

We experimented with several applications of complexity models.  Not sure we every truly embraced the idea as a general problem solving technique,  but it is one of those methods where the journey led you to useful learnings.  Though the methods were never integrated broadly beyond the general and well known simulation techniques that already existed.   We interacted with the Santa Fe Institute a number of times and worked with some of their spin-offs.  Here a talk: " ... an interview with the Harvard Business Review, SFI Trustee Michael Mauboussin talks about complex adaptive systems and why successful investors have stopped paying attention to expert analysis in favor of diverse and challenging viewpoints. The interview is part of an HBR special issue, "Embracing Complexity." ... '

The Paradox of Common Sense

Another inspiration from SFI, Duncan Watts, who led us indirectly to things like Tremor. Here a new article leading to his forthcoming book on the connections between human common sense and science. Links well with the common sense in the realm of the consumer as well.

Complex Technologies Improve More Slowly

From the Santa Fe Institute

A new study by several SFI-affiliated researchers demonstrates a way to measure the interconnectedness of a technology's components and predict which technologies are likeliest to advance rapidly and which, due to their complexity, are likely to improve more slowly.
Knowing this can help policy makers make better investment decisions between, for example, two renewable energy technologies, or help engineers create designs with better prospects for improvement....

Do the Work

The Kindle edition of Steven Pressfield's excellent book: Do the Work is free. " ...  Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? Have you started a project but never finished? Would you like to do work that matters, but don't know where to start?  The answer is Do the Work, a manifesto by bestselling author Steven Pressfield, that will show you that it’s not about better ideas, it’s about actually doing the work. Do the Work is a weapon against Resistance – a tool that will help you take action and successfully ship projects out the door ... "

On the Santa Fe Institute

I was the enterprise's representative to the well known Santa Fe Institute for several years.  Was always interesting, sometimes directly useful.  Mark Montgomery of Kyield comments on SFI as an innovation organization.  And some of their current difficulties.  Insightful.

Bunchball Nitro: A Gamification example

In my recent Gamification post I received a comment from Rajat Paharia, the founder of Bunchball. He recently gave a talk on Gamification and Behavioral Economics at Stanford. You can see the video here.

They write in their site:

" ... Participation builds lasting relationships and impacts your fundamental business objectives. It doesn't matter if you're dealing with customers, students, employees, or fans - we're all people, and if you can get us to participate, you can drive business value.

Nitro drives participation using Gamification.

Gamification works because it satisfies our fundamental human needs and desires. People have fundamental needs and desires - for reward, status, achievement, self-expression, competition, and altruism among others. These needs are universal, and cross generations, demographics, cultures and genders. Is your website or experience doing anything to address these needs? Most aren't ... "

Well worth a look. Also points back to a related video by Leighton Read, co-author of the book 'Total Engagement' on the value of using game playing for work.

Temporal Analytics Engine

Wim Van de Velde points me the Recorded Future Site, which I had missed. What they call a temporal analytics engine. Not descriptive enough as a title. Just exploring. It has many possible applications, but having been involved in CI this interested me:

Competitive intelligence research
Stay up-to-date on corporate activities...
Competitive intelligence- follow future strategic plans and historic activity ; learn from your competition
Find out which products your competitors are using
Spot mergers, acquisitions, financial ratings, analyst guidance,accounting changes
Monitor for product recalls, companies using products, legal issues, IPOs, patent issuances, product releases
Uncover strategic alliances and business relationships
Find quotations and track sentiment in analyst, commentator, news and blog statements ... "