Chaos to Order: Doyne Farmer on Complexity Science and Economic Transformation

J. Doyne Farmer is director of the Complexity Economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is a renowned physicist and complex systems scientist with a career spanning more than four decades. As a pioneer in chaos theory and complexity science, he has made significant contributions to understanding dynamic systems and their applications in various fields, including economics and financial markets.In this conversation with Dave Young, the Global Leader of the BCG Henderson Institute’s Center for Climate & Sustainability, Doyne discusses his journey from astrophysics to pioneering work in chaos theory and complex systems. He explains how modern computational power and big data are revolutionizing economic modeling, sharing insights from his team’s accurate prediction of COVID-19’s economic impact in the U.K. Farmer argues for a shift from traditional macroeconomic models to more dynamic, data-driven approaches that can capture the intricacies of our complex economic systems.

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Businesses have a unique opportunity to create a better world, addressing major environmental and social challenges in a way that creates new business value and competitive advantage. How can they do this? In this show, Dave Young, Fellow at the BCG Henderson Institute and Global Lead for the Total Societal Impact topic at BCG interviews senior business executives across the world to discuss their experiences and views on what it will take for companies to reunite the two "S-words" of business strategy: sustainability and sustainable competitive advantage.