Model Thinking to take center stage on April 25
University of Michigan and Santa Fe Institute Fellow Professor Scott Page will be the keynote speaker at the Raikes School Spring Advisory Board Invited Speakers lecture on April 25. Scott researches how diversity improves performance and decision making, when ‘diversity’ means what we look like on the outside, rather than what we look like within—the tools and abilities that make each of us unique. He will be discussing the important role that models can play in quantitative analysis of complex system.
He is the author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies, about how we think in groups and why collective wisdom works. Scott’s current book, Diversity and Complexity provides an introduction to the role of diversity in complex adaptive systems. He explains how diversity underpins system level robustness, allowing for multiple responses to external shocks and internal adaptations.
Scott also studies complex systems. He is the author of Complex Adaptive Systems and is on the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute, the world-renowned research center dedicated to using complexity science to solve human problems. Scott is director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan where he serves as Leonid Hurwicz Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, Economics, and Political Science. He teaches two courses, Understanding Complexity and The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently Is Your Greatest Asset on The Great Courses website. Scott received a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship in Social Sciences/Political Science.
Previous speakers in the Raikes School Advisory Board Speaker Series have included: Bill Gates (Microsoft); Evan Williams (Twitter); Jeff Raikes (Gates Foundation); Robbie Bach (Microsoft); and Chris Flink (IDEO).