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The result is now clear to just about everyone on the planet. The smartest guys in the room were no match for terabytes of data and smart algorithms. There is no one “theory of the case” anymore, but thousands of them, being run constantly. The point isn’t to be right, but to become less wrong over time.
Via Complexity Digest, Spaceweaver
Eric Bonabeau's team at Icosystems have helped pioneer commercial application of agent based modelling applications. It's nice to see them get some recognition in the Forbes article. However the article itself would have been much stronger if it had opened its scope and mentioned other teams such as Argonne National Labs (Repast), George Mason University (Mason), Uri Wilensky and the CCL team at NorthWestern (NetLogo). Technical University of Berlin/Federal Institute Zurich and Senozon (Matsim) amongst many others. All these teams have built platforms that are slowly but surely moving agent based simulation from academic theory to important real world applications and adoption. Nevertheless - good article and nice to see this being covered by the wider press.
When the Thomas Edison was asked about success amidst failure, he said that “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
If Thomas Edison was alive today he would say that innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% simulation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
With that kind of dedication, it’s no wonder that Edison was awarded over 1000 patents, including the light bulb, the phonograph and the motion picture camera, making him one of the most prolific inventors in history.
It also becomes clear why he regarded success as “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Failing 10,000 times is a physical and mental undertaking that far exceeds most people’s endurance. Today, however, a new breed of innovators are outsourcing failure to computer simulations and it’s changing everything we thought we knew about business strategy.