Andrew Berkley: Data Science Lead, Strategic Intelligence, World Economic Forum

The challenges during these times are two-fold. First, how can we best help the global community access and make sense of complex data in an uncertain world? Second, how can we best help leaders become more comfortable with uncertainty and enable them to make better decisions even though those decisions might have far-reaching implications beyond their immediate scope or understanding?

The answer to both of these questions relies on successfully building a framework that identifies and amplifies positive network externalities. That is, by not only using network principles to suggest how disparate datasets might be complementary, but also using those same principles to suggest how leaders’ expertise might be able to complement those datasets in unexpected ways, we can start to get a better sense of how to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues.