The growth of the global population beyond 7 billion people means the pace of innovation must also continue to increase, said SFI Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West at the recent Compass Summit conference.

“We’ve been going faster and faster,” said West, who leads with SFI External Professor Luis Bettencourt the cities & urbanization research program at SFI. “Is this sustainable? Obviously, it isn’t. Eventually, you’d have to have an equivalent of an information technology revolution or an industrial revolution every year.”

Read the Scientific American article (October 31, 2001)

Watch the video about SFI's cities & urbanization research (7 minutes)