Innovation is getting a lot of attention at the moment in development and humanitarian work. Many, including myself, see this as long overdue. But, according to an article in this weeks Economist, this attention may be misplaced. The piece makes a strong argument for the importance of imitation in business, and its advantages over innovation. [...]
Archive for the ‘Trade’ Category
The Limitations of Imitation
Posted in Biology, Evolution, Influence, Innovation, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Reports and Studies, Strategy, Technology, Trade on May 18, 2012 | 1 Comment »
JP Morgan and the Price of Complexity
Posted in Accountability, Biology, Chaos, Economics, Evolution, Financial crisis, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Self organisation, Strategy, Technology, Trade on May 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
This is the text of an article in the Washington Post by Dominic Basulto about last week’s events in the financial markets. Great stuff. When news first broke Thursday that JPMorgan’s credit derivatives portfolio had sustained a loss of $2 billion, and potentially as much as $5 billion, on trades gone awry, there was an [...]
New Scientist Briefing: Can ecosystems show how to fix the euro?
Posted in Biology, Economics, Financial crisis, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Networks, Public Policy, Technology, Trade on November 10, 2011 | 5 Comments »
The eurozone, like the rest of the world economy, is a complex networked system. That gives it properties economists rarely consider but which could help us understand the current crisis. This New Scientist ‘Science in Society’ Briefing examines the issues. What is a complex network? Complex networks have many interconnected components which influence each other’s [...]
What Does The Atlas of Economic Complexity Mean for Development?
Posted in Climate change, Economics, Evolution, Financial crisis, Innovation, Networks, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Technology, Trade on November 3, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard and Cesar Hidalgo of MIT (whose work I have blogged about previously here) have just published the deeply impressive Atlas of Economic Complexity. It is built around an innovative, network-based methodology for understanding economies and their potential for growth. It represents perhaps the most systematic and in-depth application of the ideas [...]
Complexity and the Wealth of Nations
Posted in Economics, Evolution, Innovation, Networks, Public Policy, Self organisation, Technology, Trade on December 15, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Complexity scientists have long argued for the use of concepts such as nonlinearity and interconnectednesss to better understand economic phenomena, including growth, market failures and crashes. Ongoing research at the Harvard Center for International Development is taking this area of work forward in very promising ways. In some ways, as Tim Harford has argued, the notion [...]
Easterly team discovers power law in international trade – what are the implications?
Posted in Economics, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Trade on November 1, 2009 | 2 Comments »
A new study by William Easterly and colleagues at NYU may be a significant breakthrough for the use of complexity science concepts in international development. In the growing community of complexity thinkers in the aid sector, those with a qualitative mindset have been rather more prominent than those taking a quantitative approach. Published papers on complexity and aid to date [...]
