Economics is changing radically This paradigm shift the biggest in the field for over a century will have profound implications for business government & society for decades to come In this groundbreaking book economic thinker & writer Eric Beinhocker surveys the cutting-edge ideas of the leading economists physicists biologists & cognitive scientists who are fundamentally reshaping economics & brings their work alive for a broad audience These researchers argue that the economy is a 'complex adaptive system' more akin to the brain the internet or an ecosystem than to the static picture of economic systems portrayed by traditional theory They claim it is the evolutionary process of differentiation selection & amplification acting on designs for technologies social institutions & businesses that drives growth in the economy over time If Adam Smith provided the inspiration for economics in the twentieth century it is Charles Darwin who is providing it in the twenty-first If we can understand how evolution creates wealth then we can better answer the question ' How can we create more wealth for the benefit of individuals businesses & society?' Beinhocker shows how ' Complexity Economics' turns conventional wisdom on its head in areas such as business strategy the design of organisations the workings of stock markets & public policy As sweeping in scope as its title The Origin of Wealth is a landmark book that shatters orthodox economic theory & will rewire our thinking about how we came to be here
- & where we are going