Predicting social tipping and norm change in controlled experiments – It’s fascinating how social change can happen quickly, such as the acceptance of gay marriage and the weakening sensitivity towards privacy issues. I remember listening to a podcast episode from 80,000 hours and the theory put forward by the guest on why such changes can be unpredictable was really interesting. This sudden change is attributed to people not sharing their real preference and people having different thresholds of how much action they want to see from others before they themselves act.
Prospera – an experimental city of the future, libertarian paradise, being built on an island in Honduras. It’s based on the concept of charter cities proposed by Nobel prize economist Paul Romer. The idea is that less developed countries can lend a part of their land to countries with stronger institutions or companies who can then develop the land. A really exciting idea that hope works out.
The Invisible Cage: Workers’ Reactivity to Opaque Algorithmic Evaluations – Very timely article as algorithms continue to control our lives – from Youtube recommendations to Google search engine rankings. The article introduces the term Invisible Cage (a nod to Weber’s Iron Cage) which refers to “a form of control in which the criteria for success and changes to those criteria are unpredictable.”
Co-creative entrepreneurship – Having attended the OIS conference, I was introduced to the term co-creation, which refers to a design process where stakeholders like consumers are highly integrated. In this case, the authors depict co-creative entrepreneurship to “interactively construct both supply and demand, gradually resolving uncertainty.”
The role of Proof-of-Concept programs in facilitating the commercialization of research-based inventions – With one of my projects, ATTRACT, being a proof-of-concept fund taken to the next level, this article caught my attention. It highlights three roles of POCs:
- Relational – bridge gap between the stakeholders in tech development and users
- Structural – lower barriers to research development in their specific context
- Cultural – give space to think about external applications and overcome old beliefs