We all understand that knowledge shapes the fate of business and the growth of nations, but few of us are aware of the principles that govern its motion. The Infinite Alphabet unravels the laws describing the growth and diffusion of knowledge by taking you from a failed attempt to build a city of knowledge in Ecuador to the growth of China’s innovation economy. Through dozens of stories, you will learn why aircraft manufacturers in Italy began manufacturing scooters after the Second World War and how migrants like Samuel Slater shaped the industrial fabric of the United States. Knowledge is the secret to the wealth of nations. But to understand it, we must accept that it is not a single thing, but an ever-growing tapestry of unique ideas, experiences and received wisdom. An Infinite Alphabet that we are only beginning to fathom.
César A. Hidalgo, will walk you through the “three laws” and the many principles that govern how knowledge grows, moves, and decays. By the end of this journey, you will understand why knowledge grows exponentially in the electronics industry and what mechanisms govern its diffusion across geographic borders, social networks, and professional boundaries. Together these principles will teach you how knowledge shapes the world.
About the speaker
César A. Hidalgo is a Chilean-Spanish-American scholar, Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), and head of the Center for Collective Learning (CCL), a multidisciplinary research laboratory with offices at TSE and at Corvinus University of Budapest. Hidalgo is known for developing methods to estimate economic complexity and relatedness, building several national economic data observatories (oec.world, datamexico.org, datasaudi.sa, etc.), and proposing the idea of augmented democracy. These contributions have been recognized with numerous awards including the 2018 Lagrange Prize and three Webby Awards. Hidalgo holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Notre Dame and is the author of four books, The Atlas of Economic Complexity, Why Information Grows, How Humans Judge Machines, and The Infinite Alphabet that explores the principles governing the growth, diffusion, and valuation of knowledge.
Registration
Please register using the form below and contact complexity@inet.ox.ac.uk if you have any queries. Our seminars are run in person and online but are not recorded.