‘Building the New Economy’: MIT Sloan School researchers map out a blueprint to help individuals, infrastructure, and institutions withstand crises, from wars to pandemics

New digital technologies can help build resilient systems and empower communities

News provided by MIT Sloan School of Management, May 22, 2020, 07:30 ET

CAMBRIDGE, MA, May 22, 2020 — How can we make our financial system less fragile and more transparent? How can we make our healthcare infrastructure less reactive and more agile? And what can we do to create more robust civic institutions that work for all of us—not just those at the top?

A new book from researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management provides answers and insights to those pressing questions. The book, Building the New Economy, is edited by Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland, leader within the Sloan Initiative for Digital Economy and founder of the MIT-wide Connection Science program, Alexander Lipton, former Managing Director of Quantitative Solutions at Bank of America and Connection Science Fellow at MIT, and Thomas Hardjono, CTO of Connection Science and Technical Director of the MIT Trust-Data Consortium.

“With each new crisis, be it war, pandemic, natural disaster, or even the invention of a major technology, there has been a need to reinvent the relationships between individuals, businesses, and governments. The COVID-19 health emergency and ensuing economic turmoil, joined with the tsunami of data and AI technologies—is such a crisis,” says Prof. Pentland. Continue reading →