Nowadays it takes minutes to bring people together from all corners of the world. They post, comment, meet online, while making their point of view heard. To make better sense of this digital world, we need to better understand the behaviour of these digital citizen. How can we do that?! One answer is by using social physics.
According to Alex Pentland, MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab Director, social physics is
“ a social science that describes reliable, mathematical connections between information and idea flow on the one hand and people’s behaviour on the other […] social physics is about how human behaviour is driven by the exchange of ideas—how people cooperate to discover, select, and learn strategies and coordinate their actions—rather than how markets are driven by the exchange of money.”
Social physics was coined two centuries ago by Auguste Comte. He believed that certain ideas shape the development of society in a regular manner. Nowadays, the engine that drives social physics is big data. Social physics analyses patterns of human experience and idea exchange using the digital crumbs we leave behind. Like credits cards transactions or GPS locations. These are different from posting on Facebook, as those are what people chose to say. Where people spend their time or what they buy, teaches us more on who they are. Pentland thinks that by using social physics we can “predict the productivity of small groups, of departments within companies, and even of entire cities.”
To find out how founders can increase their team productivity check out the full article published on Eu-Startups.
Until next time, stay home and stay healthy.
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