July 19 [part 2]: Landscape models

Daniel Levinthal, Reginal H. Jones Professor of Corporate Strategy, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Maciej Workiewicz, Associate Professor of Management, ESSEC Business School

Link for synchronous sessions: https://hbs.zoom.us/j/97071216335?pwd=MUZRMFB0L2xXUDRxdU9nSHVMNWtYQT09

Meeting ID: 970 7121 6335

Password: tom

Dear TOM Summer School participants,

In this module, we will tackle together the NK model, which has proven to be an important modeling platform in the management literature.

In preparation for the synchronous session, we ask you to do the following tasks.

1. Watch Dan Levinthal's "Introduction to NK Landscapes" video first. There you will learn about the NK model, its applications and extensions, and the impact that this model had on the management literature, which has been substantial.

2. In preparation for the exercises, watch the "Implementing NK model in Python" video. The video will guide you through the basics of coding and how the NK model works.

3. Do a series of exercises. The same video will also introduce a series of exercises. The exercises should take about four hours to complete. You will find the details regarding the exercises in the video and in the PDF document below.

Since your summer school schedule is quite demanding, especially for those not familiar with Python or coding in general, it may be quite challenging to complete everything on time. Therefore, we want to suggest two resources:

1. We prepared a quick tutorial on Spyder, the Integrated Development Environment for Python, that we will use. Spyder comes together with the Anaconda Python distribution and is free to download and use.

2. If you are having problems understanding the Python code provided in the exercises, use ChatGPT to explain the code to you. To do that, go to Bing AI or ChatGPT and ask it to explain and walk you through the code and paste the code as is.

If after using these two, you are still scratching your head, we would like to encourage you to ask other participants in the Summer School to form small teams of two or three people and go through the exercises together.

See you all soon!

Dan and Maciej

Introduction

implementing NK model in python

Readings:

Baumann O, Schmidt J, Stieglitz N. 2019. Effective Search in Rugged Performance Landscapes: A Review and Outlook. Journal of Management 45(1): 285–318.

Csaszar FA. 2018. A note on how NK landscapes work. Journal of Organization Design. Springer 7(1): 1–6.

Levinthal DA. 1997. Adaptation on rugged landscapes. Management Science 43(7): 934–950.

Tutorial on Spyder Python IDE

Note from Maciej & Python Code for Videos