With BEMACS, Alex Pentland and His Social Physics in Milan
By replacing individual incentives with social incentives (you won't be rewarded if you behave in a certain way, but only if those surrounding you do), we can build better social structures. And we can do so even on a very small scale (i.e. a city, a company, a group of friends). This can be done by using the mountain of digital footprints left behind from the pervasiveness of electronic devices and the opportunity to create new ones, with the aim of observing the behavior of consenting individuals. This is the thesis of Alex Pentland, co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, in his book Social Physics, published in Italian as Fisica sociale. Come si propagano le buone idee, (UBE 2015, 288 pages, 22 euros, 11,99 e-pub). By using small interventions suggested by social physics, Pentland was able to improve the profits of investors active on an online trading platform, increase call center productivity, help members of a small community lose weight, and locate ten 2.5m red balloons scattered randomly across the United States in less than 9 hours.
Pentland will be at Bocconi on Thursday 17 March for an event organized by the Bachelor of Science in Economics, Management and Computer Science (BEMACS) called Data Society: What will the future focused on Big Data be like? (Aula Manfredini, 7pm, in collaboration with Egea and Meet the Media Guru, with Gianmario Verona and Maria Grazia Mattei also participating).
BEMACS, which will begin in the 2016-2017 academic year, is an international program for students interested in analyzing the dynamics driving innovation, in particular those related to the digital economy and social media, and their revolutionary impact on the economy and society as a whole.
"The companies and institutions that are able to fully take advantage of data and IT," explains the Director of the program, Emanuele Borgonovo, "will secure a competitive advantage. We are experiencing increasing demand for professional figures capable of interpreting data through the lens of economic models. That is, professional figures equipped with an economic, quantitative and IT education that prepares them to navigate various levels in order to meet the challenges of the data-driven economy."