Social Physics Can Change Your Company (and the World)

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Business, Marketing, Teams, Business/entrepreneurship, Harvard, Management, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Hbr, Business/management, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Business/marketing, Innovation, Communication

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2014

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sandy Pentland, MIT professor, on how big data is revealing the science behind how we work together, based on his book "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread."

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone it's Kurt we need your help with our annual survey this is your last chance to help us get to know you so we can make idea cast even better for you
0:09.8	it's easy just go to HBR.org
0:13.0	podcast survey.
0:15.0	Again, that's HBR.org.
0:17.0	And thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast. I'm Senior Editor Scott Barranato.
0:37.0	Today I'm joined by a friend of HBR, MIT Professor Sandy Pentland.
0:41.0	Sandy's here to talk about his new book called Social Physics,
0:45.0	How Good Ideas Spread Lessons From a New Science.
0:48.0	The book is about applying hard data to social science,
0:51.0	and what that tells you about how organizations, cities, and even entire
0:55.2	countries grow and change based on how people interact.
0:59.0	Many of the ideas in the book debuted in the pages of HPR, first in an April 2012 feature called the New Science of
1:04.8	Building Great Teams, and then in a follow-up feature from November 2013 called Beyond
1:09.6	the Echo Chamber.
1:11.1	Sandy, thank you for joining us.
1:12.4	My pleasure. Glad to be here. Chamber. Sandy, thank you for joining us.
1:12.5	My pleasure.
1:13.5	Glad to be here.
1:14.5	So I've read and enjoyed the book, but for those who haven't, we have to start with the obvious
1:18.2	question. What exactly is social physics?
1:20.7	Well, social physics is what happens when big data meets social science, including political
1:26.7	science and medical science.
	...

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