Hans Rosling – The Best Data You’ve Ever Seen

0:15 About 10 years ago, I took on the task to teach global development to Swedish undergraduate students. That was after having spent about 20 years together with African institutions studying hunger in Africa,so I was sort of expected to know a little about the world. And I started in our medical university, Karolinska Institute, an undergraduate course called Global Health. But when you get that opportunity, you get a little nervous. I thought, these students coming to us actually have the highest grade you can get in Swedish college systems — so, I thought, maybe they know everything I’m going to teach them about. So I did a pre-test when they came. And one of the questions from which I learned a lot was this one: “Which country has the highest child mortality of these five pairs?”

Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson – Big Data: The Management Revolution

“There’s much wisdom in that saying, which has been attributed to both W. Edwards Deming and Peter Drucker, and it explains why the recent explosion of digital data is so important. Simply put, because of big data, managers can measure, and hence know, radically more about their businesses, and directly translate that knowledge into improved decision making and performance.

Paul Ohm – The underwhelming Benefits of Big Data

“The cloud is a hodgepodge, and Paul Schwartz, in his rich Article, Information Privacy in the Cloud, tackles many different parts of the confusing combination, giving meaning to mush in his characteristically careful style. Consider his thoughts on the changes being wrought to information privacy law by the move to “networked intelligence in the cloud.” This expression refers, at least in part, to what others have been calling “Big Data,” the trendy moniker for powerful new forms of data analytics. Professor Schwartz weighs the benefits of Big Data techniques against the risks they pose to privacy. Better than some others, he takes care to point to the benefits that truly matter. Too many commentators have too often overstated the benefits of Big Data, inflating studies and praising the merely trivial.

Paul M. Schwartz – Information Privacy in the Cloud

“Cloud computing is the locating of computing resources on the Internet in a fashion that makes them highly dynamic and scalable. This kind of distributed computing environment can quickly expand to handle a greater system load or take on new tasks. Cloud computing thereby permits dramatic flexibility in processing decisions—on a global basis.

Michael Tushman & Philip Anderson – Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments

“Technology can be defined as those tools, devices, and knowledge that mediate between inputs and outputs (process technology) and/or that create new products or services (product technology) (Rosenberg, 1972). Technological change has an unequivocal impact on economic growth (Solow, 1957; Klein, 1984)and on the development of industries (Lawrence and Dyer, 1983).The impact of technology and technological change on environmental conditions is, however, less clear.

Sood & Tellis – Technological Evolution and Radical Innovation

“Technological change is perhaps the most powerful engine of growth in markets today. To harness this source of growth, firms need answers to key questions about the dynamics of technological change: (1) How do new technologies evolve? (2) How do rival technologies compete? and (3) How do firms deal with technological evolution?

Helga Nowotny – Insatiable Curiosity

“An innovative idea is recognizable by the fact that it surprises. The greater the surprise, the more innovative the idea. But innovations do not consist solely of ideas, even if ideas are where they start from. Innovations are tied to the respective context.They consist in the recognition and implementation of new possibilities that reach beyond the tested or accustomed routine. They are defined by their success, which consists in opening up new spaces for activity, whether in connection with technological products, new markets, organizational adjustments, or other social arrangements.

Laperche, Uzunidis & Tunzelmann – The Genesis of Innovation

“Knowledge and innovation are the two main resources of contemporary capitalism. To study and understand these roles, it is first helpful to draw on the theory of systems. Technological innovation cannot be understood when isolated from its context. Putting innovation in perspective requires a holistic and systemic approach: new technologies, new products, but also new markets, new organization and new management practices.

John H. Miller & Scott E. Page – Complex Adaptive Systems

An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life

“Adaptive social systems are composed of interacting, thoughtful (but perhaps not brilliant) agents. It would be difficult to date the exact moment that such systems first arose on our planet—perhaps it was when early single-celled organisms began to compete with one another for resources or, more likely, much earlier when chemical interactions in the primordial soup began to self-replicate. Once these adaptive social systems emerged, the planet underwent a dramatic change where, as Charles Darwin noted, “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Indeed, we find ourselves at the beginning of a new millennium being not only continually surprised, delighted, and confounded by the unfolding of social systems with which we are well acquainted, but also in the enviable position of creating and crafting novel adaptive social systems such as those arising in computer networks.

Serena Chan – Complex Adaptive Systems

“The definition for complex adaptive systems seems to change with the different attempts at application. In order to make a good match between a hard-to-solve problem and a complexity approach, it is important to consider whether and how the problem exhibits attributes of a complex adaptive system. Research is indicating that CAS have a number of characteristics which are described in the following subsections.

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