Organizational Networks

Is it better to have your work team fully connected or sparsely connected? In this episode we'll try to answer this question and more with our guest Hiroki Sayama, a SUNY Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Complex Systems at Binghamton University. Hiroki delves into the applications of network science in organizational structures and innovation dynamics by showing his recent work of extracting network structures from organizational charts to enable insights into decision-making and performance, He'll also cover how network connectivity impacts team creativity and innovation. Key insights include how the structure of organizational networks—such as the depth of hierarchy or proximity to leadership—can influence corporate performance and how sparse network connectivity fosters more diverse and innovative ideas than fully connected networks.

Guest

Hiroki Sayama: Hiroki Sayama is a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the School of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Executive Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies of the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Director of the Binghamton Center of Complex Systems (CoCo), at Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA. He also serves as a non-tenure-track Professor in the School of Commerce at Waseda University, Japan, an External Faculty member of the Vermont Complex Systems Institute at the University of Vermont, USA, and a Visiting Professor in the School of Sciences at Christ University Pune/Lavasa Campus, India. He received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and D.Sc. in Information Science, all from the University of Tokyo, Japan. He did his postdoctoral work at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. His research interests include complex dynamical networks, human and social dynamics, collective behaviors, artificial life/chemistry, interactive systems, and complex systems education, among others. He is an expert on mathematical/computational modeling and analysis of various complex systems. He has published more than 240 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings papers and has written or edited 16 books and conference proceedings about complex systems related topics. His open-access textbook on complex systems modeling and analysis has been downloaded more than 180,000 times globally and has become one of the standard textbooks on this subject. He currently serves as the Vice President of the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL), an Elected Council / Executive Committee / CCS Steering Committee Member of the Complex Systems Society, a Board member of the Network Science Society (NetSci), the Chief Editor of Complexity (Wiley), the Founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS), an Associate Editor of Artificial Life (MIT Press), and as an editorial board member for several other journals.