Theodore Modis

Theodore Modis (born August 11, 1943) is a strategic business analyst, futurist, physicist, and international consultant. He specializes in applying fundamental scientific concepts to predicting social phenomena. In particular, he uses the law of natural growth in competition as expressed by the logistic function or S-curve to forecast markets, product sales, primary-energy substitutions, the diffusion of technologies, and generally any process that grows in competition.[1][2][3][4][5] He is a vehement critic of the concept of the Technological Singularity.[6][7][8][9][10] He has suggested a simple mathematical relationship between Entropy and Complexity as the latter being the time derivative of the former.[11]

Not to be confused with Theodoros Modis.
Theodore Modis
Modis in 2020
Born (1943-08-11) August 11, 1943
Greece
NationalityGreek, Swiss
Alma materAnatolia College
Columbia University
Known forExpertise in S-Curve
Criticism of the Technological Singularity
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics, forecasting, business consulting
InstitutionsCERN
University of Geneva
Digital Equipment Corporation
Growth Dynamics
Academic advisorsJack Steinberger

He currently lives in Lugano, Switzerland.

Education

He went to Columbia University, New York, where he received a master's degree in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in High Energy Physics, (sponsor J. Steinberger). His secondary education was in Greece at Anatolia College in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Career

Modis carried out research in particle physics at Brookhaven National Laboratories and CERN before moving to work at Digital Equipment Corporation for more than a decade as the head of a management science consultants group. He has on occasion taught at Columbia University, the University of Geneva, Webster University, the European business schools INSEAD and IMD, and was a professor at DUXX Graduate School of Business Leadership in Monterrey, Mexico between 1998 and 2001. He has been in the advisory board of the international journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change since 1991.[12] He is also the founder of Growth Dynamics,[13] a Swiss-based organization specializing in business strategy, strategic forecasting and management consulting.[14]

Publications

He has published about one hundred articles in scientific and in business journals, as well as ten books: Predictions, Conquering Uncertainty, An S-Shaped Trail to Wall Street (treating the New York Stock Exchange as an ecosystem), Predictions: 10 Years Later, Bestseller Driven, Natural Laws in the Service of the Decision Maker, Decision-Making for a New World, An S-shaped Adventure: "Predictions" 20 Years Later, Fortune Favors the Bold: A Woman’s Odyssey through a Turbulent Century,[15] and Science with Street Value: A Physicist's Wanderings off the Beaten Track.[16] His books have appeared in a number of other languages; Predictions has been translated into German, Japanese, and Greek, and Conquering Uncertainty has been translated into Chinese Long Form, Chinese Short Form, Greek, and Dutch. Fortune Favors the Bold: A Woman’s Odyssey through a Turbulent Century has been translated into Greek and published under the title ΘΕΟΔΟΣΙΑ.

Distinctions

Praise for Predictions
  • "Interesting, well written, enjoyable, controversial, thought-provoking." - Simon van der Meer, Physicist, Nobel Prize 1984.[17]
  • "A lot of highly selective fun re-invoking much in my own past experiences." - George Wald, professor emeritus of biology at Harvard, Nobel Prize 1967.[17]
  • "You must read this book. It is the most delightful one on forecasting I have encountered in a very long time. Written for the enjoyment of both layperson and professional, it is fascinating and provocative." - Harold Linstone, Editor in Chief; Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 1992.[18]
  • "We have the technology now to forecast many social phenomena ... . I follow the work of Theodore Modis, who nicely sums up the case for utility and believability of predictions." - Kevin Kelly (editor), Executive Editor of WIRED.[19]
  • "A fascinating technique for making forecasts." - THE FUTURIST.[20]
  • "... he (Modis) does cite the relationship of his 'overall' 56-year cycles and evidence on the associated clustering of technological innovations to prior work by Kondratieff and Schumpeter (in my opinion, Modis’ evidence on these topics is more extensive and compelling than that of either of these scholars.)" - Kenneth Land, SCIENCE.[21]
  • "Can a well-known mathematical equation be used to predict a wide range of human activity? Maybe." - Vernon Church, NEWSWEEK.[22]

iPhone/iPad Applications

He has created two applications for iPhone/iPad, The S_Curve and Biorhythm_Science. Together with Vasco Almeida they created applications that forecast stock prices like species by treating the stock market as an ecosystem: Stock Fcsts and 2Stock Fcsts[23] for the iPhone and Stocks' Futures and 2Stocks' Future[24] for the iPad.[25]

Partial bibliography
  • An S-Shaped Adventure - "Predictions" 20 Years Later, Growth Dynamics, Lugano, Switzerland, November 2014.
  • An S-Shaped Trail to Wall Street - Survival of the Fittest Reigns at the Stock Market, Growth Dynamics, Geneva, Switzerland, April 1999.
  • Conquering Uncertainty: Understanding Corporate Cycles and Positioning Your Company to Survive the Changing Environment BusinessWeek Books, McGraw-Hill, New York, June 1998.
  • Predictions - Society's Telltale Signature Reveals the Past and Forecasts the Future, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992.
  • Predictions: - 10 Years Later, Growth Dynamics, Geneva, Switzerland, October 2000.
  • Bestseller Driven, Growth Dynamics, Lugano, Switzerland, 2005.
  • Natural Laws in the Service of the Decision Maker - How to Use Science-Based Methodologies to See more Clearly further into the Future, Growth Dynamics, Lugano, Switzerland, July 2013.
  • Decision-Making for a New World: Natural Laws of Evolution and Competition as a Road Map to Revolutionary New Management, Campus Verlag-edition MALIK, Frankfurt, July 2018.
  • Fortune Favors the Bold: A Woman’s Odyssey through a Turbulent Century, ibidem Press, Stuttgart, October 2018. Greek edition under the title ΘΕΟΔΟΣΙΑ, Livani Publishing Organizations, Athens, Greece, November 2020.
  • Science with Street Value: A Physicist’s Wanderings off the Beaten Track, ibidem Press, Stuttgart, October 2020.
  • Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 69, No 4, 2002 - an essay about the growth of complexity in the universe.

Personal life

Modis is the father of Yorgo Modis, the grandson of Theodoros Modis,[26] and nephew of Georgios Modis.

References
  1. Modis, Theodore (2013). "Long-Term GDP Forecasts and the Prospects for Growth" (PDF). Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 80 (8): 1557. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2013.02.010. S2CID 55535180.
  2. Modis, Theodore (1994). "Life Cycles - Forecasting the Rise and Fall of Almost Anything" (PDF). The Futurist. 28 (5): 20.
  3. Modis, Theodore (July 1, 2013). Natural Laws in the Service of the Decision Maker: How to Use Science-Based Methodologies to See more Clearly further into the Future (1 ed.). Lugano, Switzerland: Growth Dynamics. p. 246. ISBN 978-2970021681.
  4. Modis, Theodore (2007). “Strengths and Weaknesses of S-Curves”. Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 74, (6): 866-872.
  5. Debecker, Alain, and Modis, Theodore (1994). “Determination of the Uncertainties in S-curve Logistic Fits”. Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 46 (2): 153-173.
  6. Modis, Theodore (2020). “Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change—An Update”. Published in Korotayev, Andrey; LePoire, David (Eds.) (January 3, 2020). The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures (1 ed.). Springer. p. 620. ISBN 978-3-030-33730-8. pp 101-104
  7. Modis, Theodore (2012). “Why the Singularity Cannot Happen”. Published in Eden, Amnon H. et al (Eds.) (2012). Singularity Hypothesis (PDF). New York: Springer. p. 311. ISBN 978-3-642-32560-1. pp 311-339.
  8. Modis, Theodore (2006). “The Singularity Myth”. Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 73 (2): 104-112.
  9. Modis, Theodore (May–June 2003). “The Limits of Complexity and Change”. The Futurist. 37 (3): 26-32.
  10. Modis, Theodore (2002). “Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change”. Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 69 (4): 377-404.
  11. Modis, Theodore (2022). "Links between entropy, complexity, and the technological singularity". Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Volume 176, 2022-3, p. 121457. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121457.
  12. "Technological Forecasting and Social Change Editorial Board" – via www.journals.elsevier.com.
  13. "Home". growth-dynamics.com.
  14. http://ch.linkedin.com/pub/theodore-modis/0/222/140/
  15. Modis, Theodore (2018). Fortune Favors the Bold: A Woman's Odyssey through a Turbulent Century. ibidem Press. ISBN 978-3838211978.
  16. Modis, Theodore (2020). Science with Street Value: A Physicist's Wanderings off the Beaten Track. ibidem Press. ISBN 978-3-8382-1447-4.
  17. From the back cover in Modis, Theodore (1992). Predictions. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-75917-5.
  18. Linstone, Harold (1992). "Editor-in-chief". Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 42 (3): 317–319. doi:10.1016/0040-1625(92)90040-Z.
  19. Kelly, Kevin (1994). Out of Control. New York: Addison Wesley. pp. 436–437. ISBN 0-201-48340-8.
  20. "A fascinating technique for making forecasts". The Futurist. November–December 1992.
  21. Land, Kenneth C. (1993). "S-Curves Everywhere". Science. 259 (26 February 1993): 1349–50. doi:10.1126/science.259.5099.1349. PMID 17732257.
  22. Church, Vernon. "A New Kind of Crystal Ball". Newsweek (26 October 1992).
  23. "iPhone Application". www.growth-dynamics.com.
  24. "iPad Application". www.growth-dynamics.com.
  25. "Stocks' Futures by Theodore Modis & Vasco Almeida" – via www.youtube.com.
  26. "The funeral of the Theodoros Modi in the Monastir(FYROM) IN 1904". YouTube.
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