Para Limes

Seminar: Memo to a New Generation of Leaders – Embrace Complexity, Harness Human Nature

Seminar: Memo to a New Generation of Leaders – Embrace Complexity, Harness Human Nature

Dr. Eric Bonabeau

Theoretical Physicist and the Founder and Chairman of Icosystem Corporation

Dr. Eric Bonabeau is a theoretical physicist and the founder and Chairman of Icosystem Corporation, a Cambridge (US)-based company dedicated to developing and incubating technologies in the field of artificial intelligence, with applications ranging from e-commerce to drug discovery.

Dr. Bonabeau is one of the world’s leading experts in complex systems and distributed adaptive problem solving, with more than one hundred articles in scientific journals. His book “Swarm Intelligence” has been a scientific bestseller for thirteen years. His articles in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review have all been exploring the limits of human decision making in a complex, decentralized and unpredictable world.

His commercial experience includes years of research and development in US and European telecommunications and software companies. He sits on the advisory board of a number of Fortune 500 corporations. Prior to his current position, Dr. Bonabeau was the CEO of Eurobios, then a joint venture with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young applying the science of complex adaptive systems to business issues. He has been a research director with France Telecom R&D, an R&D engineer with Cadence Design Systems (in Lowell, MA, USA), and the Interval Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.

He was also the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journals Advances in Complex Systems (World Scientific) and ACM Transactions on Adaptive and Autonomous Systems) and serves as a member of the editorial board of a number of scientific journals.
Date: 16 October 2012

Time: 3pm – 4pm

Venue: Function Hall 1, Level 3, Nanyang Executive Centre, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Address: 60 Nanyang View, Singapore 639673

Abstract

Complexity and networks are present all around us. It is present in ecology, human systems, the weather, the stock market and even in traffic jams. Most experts agree that the term complexity comprises multiple agents interacting with one another; emergence of patterns and behaviours over time; and unintended consequences. Although the environment is increasingly more complex, many of us are limited by the cause-effect relationships we perceive in problems and solutions. If we know complexity exists and impacts us, what can we do about it? How does it impact the way we make decisions? This lecture is for people making decisions, both personal and on public policy, in an increasingly complex environment. It aims to illustrate how we can improve analysis and decision-making in an ever-changing environment.