Good-bye to Determinism：The Circle of Innovation
Speaker：Prof. Fred Phillips
Professor，University of New Mexico；PICMET Fellow
Editor-in-Chief of《Technological Forecasting & Social Change》（SSCI，SPPM A-Class Journal）
Guest speaker：Dr. Xu Guannan(Associate Professor ，Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications)
Discussant: Dr. Zhong Wei（Assistant professor，Tsinghua University）
Dr. Kong Dejing（Assistant professor，Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications）
Host： Dr. Zhou Yuan , Associate Professor of Tsinghua University
Date：Friday，March 8, 2019
Time：18:30 – 20:30
Venue：Room428，School of Public Policy and Management，Tsinghua University
Lecture Synopsis：
An argument, lasting from the 19th century through the present day, has to do with whether social changes create technological innovation (“technological determinism”) or vice versa (“social determinism”). Advocates of either argued that both could not be true. Modern interactive information technology allows us to see that neither view is fully correct, and that in fact there is full circular feedback from social and organizational effects to technological innovation and back again. This paper offers instances of the Circle of Innovation. It analyzes and attempts to resolve the nuances of both determinist positions. It ties a third determinist tradition, linguistic determinism, to technology management practice. Implications of this theoretical discussion for research, for public policy, and for business include the need for renewed dialog between economics and sociology; the need for a new embrace of nonlinear analysis; and the potential for greater profits from re-assessing technology assessment and market segmentation.
Speaker Biography：
Dr. Fred Phillips is currently a Professor at University of New Mexico. He is Editor-in-Chief of《Technological Forecasting & Social Change》（SSCI，SPPM A-Class Journal）which Reuters ranks as #4 of 55 planning and development journals, and is one of the top three journals in the technology management field. He is the 2017 winner of the Kondratieff Medal, awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences. In earlier years he held teaching, research, honorary, or management positions at the Universities of Aston and Birmingham in England, General Motors Research Laboratories, Market Research Corporation of America, Battelle-Pacific Northwest National Laboratories… In the USA and overseas, he has been a leader in developing graduate management curricula for employees of international and high-tech companies. His contributions in operations research include "Phillips' Law" of longitu？dinal sampling, and the first parallel computing experiments with Data Envelopment Analysis.
He authored the textbook Market-Oriented Technology Management, the popular title The Conscious Manager: Zen for Decision Makers, and a book on high-tech economic development, The Technopolis Columns.
