Bottom-up Social Science: A New Tool for Business

a Monitor Networks Conversation
featuring Josh Epstein, The Brookings Institution

October 13, 2004

How do social structures and group behaviors arise from the interaction of individuals? Josh Epstein approaches this age-old question with cutting-edge computer simulation techniques. Such fundamental collective behaviors as economic growth, cultural transmission, combat, and organizational behavior are seen to “emerge” from the interaction of individual agents following simple local rules.

Josh has applied these techniques to a wide variety of problems, ranging from tax policy, epidemics and bio-terror, the rise and fall of the Anasazi indians, and customer behavior at theme parks. At our event, he’ll explain the power of “agent-based” modeling approaches and discuss several of these projects. Recently, he’s worked with Monitor’s Chris Meyer on simulation models that "grow" organization structure.