Perspectives on Innovation

Condensed from Complexity Digest 2010.17 by Bruce Hannon

Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch, McKinsey Quarterly

Excerpt:

Trend 1: Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream
Trend 2: Making the network the organization
Trend 3: Collaboration at scale
Trend 4: The growing ‘Internet of Things’
Trend 5: Experimentation and big data
Trend 6: Wiring for a sustainable world
Trend 7: Imagining anything as a service
Trend 8: The age of the multisided business model
Trend 9: Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid
Trend 10: Producing public good on the grid

Source : Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch, Jacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and James Manyika, McKinsey Quaterly, 2010/08

(more…)

Excerpted from Complexity Digest 2010.15 by Bruce Hannon

Does diversity always grow?, Nature

Excerpt: McShea and Brandon do not claim that their law represents a wholly new evolutionary principle, rather that it is a unifying one. The tendency for increasing diversity has been recognized previously in specific situations. For example, molecular geneticists know that, in the absence of selection, populations will diverge genetically as neutral mutations accumulate. And evolutionary biologists have noticed that tissues and organs that are not subject to selection, such as the eyes of cave-dwelling fish, often show more variation between individuals. The authors aim to encompass these various findings in a single theory that covers all of the fields in which the principle has been seen (…)

• Source: Does diversity always grow?, Samir Okasha, DOI: 10.1038/466318a, Nature 466, 318, 2010/07/15

(more…)

Excerpted from Complexity Digest  2010.14 by Bruce Hannon

Language networks: Their structure, function, and evolution, Complexity

Abstract: Human language is the key evolutionary innovation that makes humans different from other species. And yet, the fabric of language is tangled and all levels of description (from semantics to syntax) involve multiple layers of complexity. Recent work indicates that the global traits displayed by such levels can be analyzed in terms of networks of connected words. Here, we review the state of the art on language webs and their potential relevance to cognitive science. The emergence of syntax through language acquisition is used as a case study to illustrate how the approach can shed light into relevant questions concerning language organization and its evolution.

• Source: Language networks: Their structure, function, and evolution, Ricard V. Solé, Bernat Corominas-Murtra, Sergi Valverde, Luc Steels, DOI: 10.1002/cplx.20305, Complexity Volume 15 Issue 6, Pages 20 – 26, 2010/07

(more…)

…excerpted from Complexity Digest 2010.13

Putting organizational complexity in its place, McKinsey Quaterly

Summary: Not all complexity is bad for business “but executives don’t always know what kind their company has. They should understand what creates complexity for most employees, remove what doesn’t add value, and channel the rest to employees who can handle it effectively.

• Source: Putting organizational complexity in its place, Julian Birkinshaw and Suzanne Heywood, McKinsey Quaterly, 2010/05

First replicating creature spawned in life simulator, New Scientist

Excerpts: F YOU found a self-replicating organism living inside your computer, your first instinct might be to reach for the antivirus software. If, however, you are Andrew Wade, an avid player in the two-dimensional, mathematical universe known as the Game of Life, such a discovery is nothing short of an epiphany. (…)

(more…)

Excerpts from Complexity Digest 2010.10   (5/11) by Bruce Hannon

A telescope for spotting global crises, The Great Beyond

Excerpt: The good news is that your future can be predicted. The bad news is that it’ll cost a billion euros. That, at least, is what a team of scientists led by Dirk Helbing of the ETH in Switzerland believes. And as they point out, a billion euros is small fare compared with the bill for the current financial crisis” which might conceivably have been anticipated with the massive social-science simulations they want to establish.

• Source: A telescope for spotting global crises, Philip Ball, The Great Beyond [Nature blog], 2010/04/30

Meaning-Making Neurons, Science

Excerpt: In The Brain and the Meaning of Life, philosopher, psychologist, and computer scientist Paul Thagard (University of Waterloo) has elegantly employed the pithiness principle. He offers a tightly reasoned, often humorous, and original contribution to the emerging practice of applying science to areas heretofore the province of philosophers, theologians, ethicists, and politicians: What is reality and how can we know it? Are mind and brain one or two? What is the source of the sense of self? What is love? What is the difference between right and wrong, and how can we know it? What is the most legitimate form of government? What is the meaning of life, and how can we find happiness in it?

• Source: Meaning-Making Neurons, Michael Shermer, DOI: 10.1126/science.1189752, Science Vol. 328. no. 5979, pp. 693 – 694, 2010/05/07

(more…)