Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations

Physicist Geoffrey West has shown that there are both economies of scale (in infrastructure) and increasing returns to scale (in human creativity) from the process of urbanization:”Cities are..the cause of the good life. They are the centres of wealth creation, creativity, innovation, and invention. They  are exciting places. They are these magnets that suck people in.”

 

CORPORATIONS AND PEOPLE ALWAYS DIE, AND LIFE GETS FASTER

Geoffrey West [5.23.11]

 

The question is, as a scientist, can we take these ideas and do what we did in biology, at least based on networks and other ideas, and put this into a quantitative, mathematizable, predictive theory, so that we can understand the birth and death of companies, how that stimulates the economy?   READ MORE