prof. Frank Schweitzer (Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich)

Success and Failure - A Complex Network Perspective

The last 15 years have brought important insights into the structure and the dynamics of complex networks, e.g., to characterize classes of degree distributions, importance of nodes, universal growth mechanisms, or cascading processes on networks. However, surprisingly little is known about the impact of such features on the performance of a system, on the global level, or its constituents (agents), on the local level. Hence, we need to link structure and dynamics with performance in a quantitative, empirically testable way. This means, for the global perspective we have to specify how network resilience or systemic risk depend on the structural properties of the system and the dynamics of the agents. For the local perspective, we have to understand the feedback between the network position of an agents and its future success or failure as an individual. Most importantly, these insights have to be developed to a degree that allows us to predict success and failure, both on the systemic and the agent's level. In the talk, I will provide examples of large-scale analyses of different social networks that allow us to obtain the insights requested.