Suitable for any postgraduate or new researcher who is interested in a career in the social sciences, this title describes the skills needed for success in moving from being a student to becoming an academic or professional social scientist. It offers an insider's view of how to make the transition.

Christopher Watts and Nigel Gilbert explore the generation, diffusion and impact of innovations, which can now be studied using computer simulations. Agent-based simulation models can be used to explain the innovation that emerges from interactions among complex, adaptive, diverse networks of firms, people, technologies, practices and resources. This book provides a critical review of recent advances in agent-based modelling and other forms of the simulation of innovation. Elements explored include: diffusion of innovations, social networks, organisational learning, science models, adopting...

The most exciting and productive areas of academic inquiry are often where the interests of two disciplines meet. This is certainly the case for the subject of this book, originally published in 1994, which explores the contribution that computer-based modelling and artificial intelligence can make to understanding fundamental issues in social science. Simulating Societies shows how computer simulations can help to clarify theoretical approaches, contribute to the evaluation of alternative theories, and illuminate one of the major issues of the social sciences: how social phenomena can...