If you’ve been wondering what brought us to Toronto…
Last Tuesday, there was an event at the Rotman School to announce our new Prosperity Institute. The Institute was spearheaded by the vision of Rotman Dean, Roger Martin, and underwritten with a generous $50 million gift from Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Province of Ontario, and a $10 million gift from Joe and Sandy Rotman. Additional fund-raising of an additional $50 million is underway I’ll head the Institute with Kevin Stolarick as Associate Director. Our goal is to make it the world’s premier think-tank on place and prosperity.
Here’s a story on the Institute’s launch event Tuesday night. More – much, much more – to come.
We’d very much appreciate your thoughts on what might be the most novel and pressing areas for research, data development and projects?
August 28th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Novel and pressing area:
What does prosperity mean without democracy? How valuable are bilateral free trade agreements without the inclusion of civil society or parliamentary oversight?
Just a thought.
August 29th, 2007 at 10:04 am
wow, what happened with the multiple postings- only hit post once.
August 29th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Sandy – I agree with your comments about the importance of networks. Has anyone really done anything with this yet? Even when it comes to looking at the social and entrepreneurial networks among companies, there seems to be very little literature and virtually no examples of practical application. To me, this reveals a dire data need – data about relationships within communities – and a ‘novel and pressing’ area for future research.
August 29th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Tim- I don’t know where my original posting ended up. I appreciate your comments. I’ve seen some recent research related to networks and clusters, but I haven’t been satisfied with the methodology. My sense is that the dynamics of networks transcend any one given field of study, and constitute so many variables, that quantification of the depth and breadth of networks, especially within the context of a place and/or it’s business community is very difficult. I’ve seen some work that reflects a networks dynamic at any one point in time, but little about the longitudinal development component of networks. This is what I meant about the static nature of networks via the use of maps.
From discussions with network researchers, I have found two distinct “types” of researchers: those who attempt to analyze networks and their histories and those that are interested in future network development (and never the two shall meet?). I keep returning to network development as a keystone component of both place and prosperity, yet am completely dissatisfied with the research currently being done. Network development transcends/transects every field of study ( and this may be one reason for the lack of research).
August 31st, 2007 at 10:26 am
So, I think this might be an interesting area for The Prosperity Institute to study. Sandy – have you read Albert-Laszlo Barabasi’s book Linked? If not, I highly recommend it, both because it’s a fun read and because he discusses theories about the emergence of networks. It would seem that, until recently, the primary theory was that as networks grew (i.e. nodes were added), links between the new nodes and existing nodes formed randomly. Barabasi’s theory is that links are not established randomly, and that this explains the large accumulation of links that a few super-connected network ‘hubs’ enjoy, which in turn has significant implications for both the structure of the network and the application of network theory to a whole host of disciplines. Also, check out Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS), which is located at Carnegie Mellon and is one of the few places I know of where there is interesting research going on into dynamic network analysis and the evolution of networks.
September 1st, 2007 at 8:59 am
Tim- Barabasi’s work has a prominent place on my bookshelf. Thanks for the information about CASOS. I look forward to learning more about their work.
As related to community and economic development, Valdis Krebs and June Holley (personal hero of mine) have an interesting site:
http://www.networkweaving.com.
Thanks