Social systems are intrinsically complex, whether they are groups of interacting ants, humans, companies, cities, or societies. How do such systems organize themselves to produce sophisticated collective behavior? How do they adapt and learn in the face of changing circumstances? How does group cooperation emerge from social yet selfish individuals, and how can such cooperation be fostered? What causes social systems, including economies, to fail or collapse, and what makes them resilient? By approaching these and other profound questions of social science from a complexity perspective, scientists are beginning to understand and predict social behavior in wholly new ways.
This accessible two-and-a-half-day executive education course will provide an intensive introduction to the field of complexity as it relates to social systems and economics. Via lectures, exercises, and interactive discussions with prominent SFI faculty, you will learn how methods and tools at the forefront of complexity science are being applied to modeling, predicting, and impacting the behavior of social systems across many disciplines. This course is specifically designed for professionals, faculty, students and others who are curious to explore and apply ideas from complexity in their own fields.
This course has no prerequisites and requires no specific math or science background. Examples of people who will particularly benefit from this course are managers and policy-makers in business, government, and non-profit organizations; industrial research and development staff; medical, social work, and education professionals; journalists; and university faculty and students in any area of science or social science.