EAGER: Innovation and Growth of Human Social Organizations from Cities to Corporations

EAGER：从城市到企业的人类社会组织的创新与成长

• 批准号: 1035225
• 负责人: Geoffrey West
• 金额: $ 9.56万
• 依托单位: Santa Fe Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-05-01 至 2012-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1035225&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Innovation; Growth; Human; Social

This research examines the social, organizational and infrastructural factors that promote innovation and lead to economic growth. It has three main goals. The first is to establish metrics of innovation, economic growth and size of social organizations across scales using datasets from urban systems and corporations around the world and across times scales. The second is to establish the quantitative connection between the dynamics of innovation and growth, through in-depth studies of cities and firms, with a specific study of the temporal evolution of Boeing's Commercial Aircraft Division. The third is to discover and model mathematically the micro-scale processes and network structures resulting in scaling of economic productivity and innovation, including those leading to economies of scale and learning in production and increasing returns in innovation, with a specific study of the component processes within Boeing Commercial Aircraft Division. The project draws on a variety of academic disciplines and features a close collaboration with industry. Concepts and hypotheses from the social sciences will be tested via analytical techniques from physics and statistical theory applied to large and comprehensive databases of cities and firms.Intellectual merit: The research is based on a comprehensive, data-driven, quantitative study of innovation and discovery processes in social organizations that has the potential to generate transformative new insights on the general factors that affect the rate of innovation and growth. This project develops and tests theories of economic growth at the micro scale, relying on empirical data analysis, and in-depth case studies of a major corporation. The focus on the history and growth of Boeing and its processes of innovation, particularly on its technological and organizational breakthroughs, aging and scaling, and learning curves, is particularly unusual because of the access to detailed firm data.Broader Impacts: Although this research is inherently risky, it offers the potential to develop a predictive theory of the growth of social organizations applicable across scales. As such, it could provide new insights into the conceptual basis for organizational theory, economics, social sciences and complex systems. This, in turn, would have a substantial impact on training, education and R&D programs in the public and private sector.

本研究考察了促进创新并导致经济增长的社会、组织和基础设施因素。它有三个主要目标。首先是利用来自世界各地城市系统和公司的数据集，建立跨尺度的创新、经济增长和社会组织规模的指标。二是通过对城市和企业的深入研究，具体研究波音商用飞机事业部的时间演变，建立创新动态与增长之间的定量联系。第三是通过对波音商用飞机事业部组件流程的具体研究，发现并数学建模导致经济生产力和创新规模化的微观尺度过程和网络结构，包括那些导致生产规模经济和学习以及创新回报增加的过程。该项目借鉴了多种学科，并与工业界密切合作。来自社会科学的概念和假设将通过应用于城市和公司的大型综合数据库的物理和统计理论的分析技术进行测试。智力优势：该研究基于对社会组织创新和发现过程的全面、数据驱动的定量研究，该研究有可能对影响创新和增长速度的一般因素产生变革性的新见解。本项目在微观尺度上发展和检验经济增长理论，依靠实证数据分析和对一家大公司的深入案例研究。对波音公司的历史和发展及其创新过程的关注，特别是对其技术和组织突破、老化和规模以及学习曲线的关注，由于可以获得详细的公司数据，因此尤为不同寻常。更广泛的影响：虽然这项研究本身就存在风险，但它为发展一种适用于跨尺度的社会组织增长的预测理论提供了潜力。因此，它可以为组织理论、经济学、社会科学和复杂系统的概念基础提供新的见解。反过来，这将对公共和私营部门的培训、教育和研发项目产生重大影响。